These are diamond-tipped indenter heads. They are used to inflict ludicrous pressure upon various shit in order to measure the hardness of said shit. Recently, one of these was used to measure the hardness of a certain animal’s shell, and, instead of crushing the ever-loving fuck out of it, it found serious resistance.
The aforementioned animal is a snail.
Let me spell this out for ya. There is a snail that can resist the onslaught from an industrial-grade diamond applied with the pressure of several metric fucktonnes. A. Snail. That. Can. Resist. A. Diamond. Indenter.
Just imagine stepping on one of these guys. Instead of breaking their shells like those of usual snails, you’d break your own fucking ankle.
Jesus trilobitic Christ.
Today’s Episode: the Scaly-Foot Gastropod
Just look at this little piece of shit. Look at it and say to my face it doesn’t look like a tank.
What we’ve got here is the rather lamely-named scaly-foot gastropod, also known by the considerably more badass-sounding names of iron snail and
Chrysomallon squamiferum. The SFG hails from the deep-sea thermal vents known as black smokers, deep-sea vents from which water gushes constantly. That water, by the way, originates from below the mantle.
The proximities of black smokers are perfectly lightless, unforgiving badlands, with water rich enough in poisonous sulphuric chemicals to perform the chemical equivalent of curbstomping on any “superior” lifeform that dares stick it’s overspecialized, prissy ass down there, heat up to 450 degrees Celsius (one thirteenth of the temperature of the Sun’s surface) and pressures that could turn any land-dwelling scum into a Flatlander within seconds. If creatures want to survive here, they must either be hyper-effective murder-machines, or damn nigh unkillable.
The SFG’s predators, such as venomous, killer cone snails with bionic harpoon guns evolved from their own “teeth”, and car-wrecking carnivorous crabs that kill snails by pressing down on their shells for days with jagged ultra-hard pincers specifically designed to do this belong in the first category.
The SFG itself belongs in the second.
Hoooly shit does it ever.
The unkillability itself is obtained by using the chemosynthetic bacteria lurking in its glands to absorb and mineralize the poisonous iron-sulphides the water is overabundant with, making them non-poisonous for the snail. It then coats its shell with the minerals, constructing an unique three-layer structure no other gastropods possess. None.
To sum it up, the outer layer, used to block the bulk of the attack, is made up of greigite (Fe3S4), a ridiculously hard mineral. Then comes a middle layer of squishy organic matter purposed to absorb the shock of impacts, dents and blows. Finally, an inner layer of aragonite (CaCO3), designed to prevent asshole crabs from sticking their nasty claws into the shell and picking it apart splinter by splinter.
How effective is it? Well, this armor is so much better than what we puny humans possess that the U.S. Army is actively conducting research about it with the hope of developing new armor using the same build. Yes, this shell is so unbreakable that it caused the a military to lose their heads over a goddamn sea snail. Go figure.
Also, according to biologists researching the SFG, if we covered oil pipes with the stuff, they could easily shrug off damage done by such trivial things as fucking icebergs,
Not bad from a snail, I say.
But that’s not all! Look at it again.
There is a reason it’s called Scaly-foot Gastropod.
Those are scales. Made out of iron minerals.
Iron minerals that are poisonous and magnetic.
The scales are there because of the tooth-harpoon-hurling killer snails. Namely, they serve to deflect the harpoons entirely. Deflective iron scales. On a snail.
Holy crap.
So let’s sum it up, shall we? There exists a snail that forges itself a magnetic armor made out of poisonous iron ore to fend off killer crabs and venomous sniper snails that hunt it in its habitat of a vent leading to the Earth’s mantle.
Oh, and they don’t really eat anything, relying on their chemosynthetic bacteria for sustenance instead. In layman’s terms, that means that the snail keeps itself running by oxidating the sulphides in the water, all of which are lethally poisonous to most lifeforms, including the snail itself. The only reason it survives is that the bacteria chemosynthetize the sulphides, enabling the snail to quite literally live off of poison.
This molluscoid tank is ridiculously metal in more ways than one.
I LOVE this sort of thing and holy SHIT is this amazing ❤
The Black Footed cat is the smallest wild cat in Africa and one of the smallest wild cats in the world.
Here’s an adult kitty for size comparison:
too smoll
OK but you can’t mention my all-time favorite cat without also mentioning that these little motherfuckers are legendary for being 1000% ready to throw down with anyone at any time, they’ve literally been seen trying to fight a giraffe and are known to successfully bring down sheep by getting underneath them and ripping their bellies open like what the fuck, chill
Their name in Afrikaans means “anthill tiger” because they’ll hide inside a hollowed out anthill and then jump out and try to rip your face off
When i was like 13 was allowed to use the internet unrestricted for the first time and i spent a lot of time on Runescape. One of the people i talked to on there was this person who had much higher levels than me in every skill and had, to my perception, a seemingly overflowing amount of game resources. One day i was taking about wishing i could get gold ore to level my smithing and not having access to any and they like “here, you can have this gold that i have” and just gave me this big stack and i was like “i don’t even have anything to offer back”. They told me they didn’t need anything and just wanted to be nice. I said that they didn’t have to and what they told me honestly has stuck with me since, they said “life’s too short to spend it being mean to people” and like it’s such a simple thing to say but combined with their actions and the weight they bore to me at the time was hugely influential on my outlook on life and the way i treat others. I don’t know who that person is but they changed my life that day and I’m so thankful to them.
high level MMO-ers are either the nicest people on earth or the spawn of Satan there is no in between
Runescape was a big part of my formative years for better or worse. Age twelve left me impressionable at best and the free lobster this guy gave me one day just stuck with me. We fished together for days on end and we talked about our parents and stuff. If you’re out there NinjaKirby69 I miss you buddy.
I forgot to type it up yesterday but one of my best experiences didn’t even involve me. It was when my younger sister, Runescape user cooldudetha, crashed the steel market single-handedly out of sheer boredom.
I need to know this story
So if you’re not aware, Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is basically a global trade market controlled by supply and demand. It’s an incredible system, and deserves a lot of commendation.
Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all.
Thousands of units of steel ingots.
And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.
Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins.
So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level).
I found out from a friend later who was part of one of the big trade guilds that the big market guilds were all pissed that somehow the steel market had crashed, skyrocketed, then crashed in quick succession for no goddamn reason and all of them had lost thousands of coins in the process.
My favorite thing about this is that it validates my entire Master’s Degree. This. This is how games can develop incidental learning and teach kids valuable lessons. This 12 year girl figured out, and manipulated, a free market economy because she was bored. She was able to recognize, understand and utilize a fundamental principal of economics to entertain herself.
I just turned to my housemate and said, “y’know, we’d never know if we were haunted” because we have four cats between us, so every clunk, bump, and crash gets entirely ignored
and now I want a movie about a ghost becoming increasingly desperate to haunt a family but they have cats and so the poor dear goes completely ignored
I’ve had this thought before. My cats aren’t allowed in the bedroom, and sometimes I hear them try to come in and just shout “No thank you!” at them. How hilarious would it be if I was really yelling at a poor ghost, trying to spook me.
Between my cat and my ADHD (wait, where did I put my purse? Wasn’t just here? Oh it’s in the pantry. Eh, must be a brain fail. Again.) I would never know whether or not my ass was haunted.
Now all we need is someone with psychosis seeing a demon and going, “Ugh. My meds are messed up again.” Demon goes, “No I’m real.” “Sure you are, Kevin.” “MY NAME IS BELZEBUB.” “SHUT THE FUCK UP KEVIN I AM TRYING TO STUDY.”
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