y’all: peter was able to stop bucky’s fist in civil war bc bucky heard peter’s voice, realized he was a child, then weakened his punch bc he was so worried about hurting a child uwu
me, eating pistachios: y’all know peter can canonically lift up to 75 tons, right. y’all know bucky’s fist is easy as hell for peter to block, right. y’all know bucky didn’t know shit about peter being a child and was just shocked that someone was able to so easily block his punch, right. y’all know that, right.
naw fuck that bucky’s punches aren’t easy to block, it’s WAY funnier if peter blocked a full force punch from bucky, who only a few seconds later realizes he’s a kid as soon as peter opens his mouth
that’s the face of a man who went from “holy shit he blocked my punch?” to “holY SHiT a 12 YEARoLD BLOCKED mY PUNCH???” in 3 seconds flat.
i went to the dentist today and my dentist honest to god said “can i ask you a question…….what the hell is in your mouth”
it was in awe lmao
then the hygienist and assistant all came over to look too and they were like “wooooow” and my ass was sitting there like
oh my god i posted this and then went to work, and
story time
okay so to preface this, my hometown where i’m originally from is a really fucking weird place. like from the outside it seems like a normal suburban town, but once you’re there for awhile you get the feeling that’s something’s not…quite all together. a lot of people are really fucking weird there — so much so that that was a running joke in school growing up, that people in the town were just like that. everyone knew not to go out to the farm lands surrounding the town especially at night, we called it “the cuts” and people used to disappear out there all the time or get shot at by the especially weird people that would live out there. the news was and still is truly a thing of horror. every time i come back i’m regaled with even more stories of crazy shit that has happened there.
to put it in perspective we generally never had “normal crime” like robbery or anything like that when i lived there, though that did happen sometimes. the news stories were always like, “a kid was kidnapped by local residents and tortured in a house around the corner,” “a random person was chased down and shot for sport in a really nice neighborhood,” “someone was gored to death by a bull while out car shopping,” etc. (these are all real, btw). everyone does drugs and the whole town is located really close to a government site where they test nuclear weapons and chemicals and shit. this is how i grew up, in this bizarre environment.
i need to preface it this way so that you get that it’s weird. it’s a fucking weird place. i used to listen to the welcome to night vale podcast and make comparisons from it to my hometown, that’s how weird it is.
i only say this so you know that this town is where i got my orthodontics from.
all the kids in my town went to this one particular orthodontist. i also used to go to a dentist in town that a lot of people went to as well. i had a permanent retainer put on my bottom teeth after braces and no one had ever said anything to me about the model of retainer itself or it being weird type of retainer at all. i saw a ton of other people (mostly other kids that were my age at the time) that had the same type of retainer as me too so i never thought about it.
so i kept my retainer in — it’s never caused me problems and it keeps my teeth straight, why not?
however i went to a dentist for the first time in a metropolitan area now, and when he saw it in my mouth his literal first reaction was to say “uh can i ask you a question….what the hell is that”
LITERALLY the words that he said
which in hindsight makes almost too much sense. of course my town of all towns would put these weird unnecessary contraptions in kids’ mouths, and of course it happened so much that everyone just thought it was normal. that sounds exactly, to a T, like my hometown.
my permanent bottom retainer is apparently this prototype that is so rare that he’s literally never seen it before in his life, not in dental school, nowhere. it’s not that it’s an outdated type, it’s just rare as fuck. they were still staring at pictures of it on my chart in wonder when i left the office.
so just know somewhere out there, in a weird ass suburban town where they test nuclear weapons and a good portion of the residents go fucking nuts, there’s probably hundreds of people still walking around with this same contraption in their mouth that exists nowhere else in the world thinking, “yeah, that’s cool. that makes sense. let me go drink the definitely not-contaminated water now and never move away from here.”
This sounds like an X-files episode
Okay, so I looked into it and I think that the town is Tracy, California.
I looked up the bull-murder thing OP mentioned and Tracy seemed to be only town that came up with a matching case. Though the man didn’t actually die from his injuries everything else matches up one for one. So just to make sure that it was the right town I looked to see if there was any murder-torture of young people in Tracy, and unfortunately there was. It was a 17 year old boy who escaped and survived the torture. And just to solidify that it was in fact Tracy I looked up shootings in residential areas and there was one of a 20 year old man who was shot and killed in a nice neighborhood.
Okay, but I decided to look into Tracy more to find out more information about it and the town is super suspicious. There’s been a lot of murders and shooting in the town. Back in 2009 an 8 year old girl, Sandra Cantu, was kidnapped and murdered by a Sunday school teacher who said she had no idea why she killed Sandra. Another case happened in 2018 when four underage boys were shot and one was killed by four teenage boys. There’s a lot of news stories on shootings, homicides, and drug busts in that town. It’s a really cute town from the outside, if you just look up Tracy, California there’s a lot of really cute businesses and nice articles on sweet things that happen in the town, but if you actually look into it the town is really sketchy.
So yeah, this sketchy town with a military base, multiple homicides and shootings is maybe Tracy, California.
………………..yeah, you guys caught me
i grew up in tracy
also i have to add another person’s tags to this since it’s honesty hour because they’re hilarious and true
Honestly I wasn’t even surprised when I found out it was in California. Even less surprised when googled it and found out it was near the Bay Area. That sounds about right.
Apparently the motto is “Think Inside the Triangle” and I’m not sure how to feel about that.
what do you think of when I say the phrase “the world’s largest turtle”? an ancient shelled beast, dragging its immense bulk slowly across an uninhabited island somewhere while invasive mammals prey on its vulnerable young? well, that’s usually the case, so I’ll forgive you this time but this is your final warning. because the world’s largest turtle is actually a sleek instrument of jellyfish mass murder the size of a fucking sedan.
put your hands together and make sure you have no jellyfish or jellyfish-like objects on your person, because it’s-
I meant that bit about no jellyfish, I will NOT be held responsible for lost fingers!
the Leatherback is a sea turtle, but one built on a scale so over-the-top-absurd that it’s hard to believe this thing is even in the same general class as your humble everyday pond turtle. god looked down into the ocean one day and told the Leatherback to tone it down a bit because it was making whales feel inadequate. but the Leatherback did not, because the only emotion they can feel is a burning hunger for the living flesh of jellyfish.
and (almost) none of this is an exaggeration, because Leatherbacks can grow to over seven feet long, (as long as Mr. Shaquille O’Neal if you politely asked him to lie down) and can weigh over 1500 pounds! (as much as one grand piano and then half of another grand piano) that’s too large to park on the street in some cities. this incredible size makes them the third largest reptile on the planet, behind a couple of crocodiles who don’t know what they have going for them.
those crocodiles also don’t know that you never want a Leatherback to be directly behind you.
Leatherbacks inhabit every tropical and temperate ocean in the world, and are also sometimes called Luths. (luth is an old-timey bullshit word for “lute”.) they got both names because they lack the traditional hard shell of most turtles, instead having a shell made of thick leathery hide stretched over a bone scaffolding. kind of like an umbrella, I guess, if the umbrella was the size of a car and also very much wanted to bite you. this leathery shell gave Leatherbacks their common name, and also kind of looks like a lute if you’re an 18th century sailor and half-blind from scurvy.
this light flexible shell makes Leatherbacks much lighter, faster, and more agile than a traditional sea turtle. and they abuse the HELL out of this, let me tell you.
a bunch of griefers, that’s what they are.
you don’t normally think “jesus christ that thing can really move” when you think about a turtle, but Leatherbacks are a definite exception. we’re talking speeds upwards of Mach Fuck and well into Dude, Holy Shit territory, here.
Leatherbacks generally cruise along at a fairly zippy 6 mph, but they can and do reach upwards of 22 mph when they feel like it. this might not seem that fast, but imagine an armored aquatic tank bearing down on your feeble human body faster than you can run. and if sheer speed alone doesn’t impress you, Leatherbacks are also capable of turning on a dime. there’s no escape from these incredible ocean bastards!
hold me closer, ocean bastard.
that’s right, Leatherbacks are fast, agile, and extremely aggressive.
adult Leatherbacks have been known to go after sharks, dolphins, human divers, other sea turtles, dogs, and basically anything else that enters the Eternal Turtle Rage zone. they’ve even gone after boats full of terrified researchers!
and you absolutely DO NOT want this to be happening to you, because Leatherbacks pack a gigantic and powerful beak that can snip your arms off like an arborist pruning a sapling. their monstrous bite shears through flesh, bone, and anyone or anything unlucky enough to be on the wrong end of the Leatherback on a bad day. their rage is unyielding and unending.
Leatherback don’t care, Leatherback SMASH.
but usually Leatherbacks aren’t disassembling boat engines with their terrible beak, but horking down huge amounts of soft-bodied animals like jellyfish, squid, and tunicates. they often dive to depths of over 4,000 feet to get these squishy lunches, which is far deeper than any other reptile can manage. the deep ocean is just too cold for other sea turtles to manage, so how do Leatherbacks do it? well, it’s simple: they’re warm-blooded.
Leatherbacks keep a constant body temperature up to 32 degrees higher than the surrounding sea water. this allows them to be active, vicious predators ready to attack a boat full of innocent researchers at a moment’s notice. but what’s REALLY weird is how they pull this body heat trick off- instead of modulating their metabolism like a mammal does, they stay warm by just never sitting fucking still.
they’ve had too much coffee today, and everyday, and forever.
Leatherbacks are actively moving almost all the time, a trait almost never seen in a reptile. instead of resting often and conserving their energy like other turtles, Leatherbacks just thrash all over the place like caffeinated toddlers and use the heat generated by their muscles to warm their bodies. it’s estimated that Leatherbacks are actually holding still and at rest just 0.1% of the time!
but this weird trick works really well and offer similar results to a more traditional warm-blooded system like your own! and to top this party of bizarre body functions and eternal turtle rage, the inside of their beaks and throats are hyperspecialized to help them hold on to soft, slippery, squishy animals they eat so much of.
they got spikes in there, is what I’m saying.
*distant jellyfish screams*
but through no fault of their own, Leatherbacks are in trouble. and it’s because we keep wrecking their nests and throwing plastic into the ocean. Leatherbacks lay their eggs in the sand like other sea turtles, and these eggs are often either dug up deliberately or accidentally stepped on despite their protected status. but it’s the plastic that’s the real problem.
as I’ve said, Leatherbacks like to eat jellyfish. and if you’re a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag just looks like a new and possibly delicious flavor of jellyfish. but unfortunately for Leatherbacks, eating enough plastic bags will kill you. (please don’t try this one at home.)
Leatherbacks need their breeding beaches to be better protected, but they also need people to quit throwing trash in the ocean. so the next time you’re on a protected turtle beach, watch where you step, and WATCH WHERE YOU THROW YOUR TRASH. hopefully these bad-tempered reptilian powerhouses can make a full recovery if we all keep this in mind. thanks, Leatherback! please do NOT bite me.
Leatherback thank you! Leatherback NOT bite your arms off.
–
thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series on my tumblr here, or check out the official archive at weirdbiology.com!
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee and support Weird Biology!
and if you’d like to see exclusive Weird Biology content, check out my Patreon today!
–
IMAGE SOURCES
img1- seaturtlecamp.com img2- National Marine Life Center img3- Project Navigation img4- divephotoguide.com img5- National Wildlife Federation img6- PlanetSave img7- GistOnThis img8- The Conversation
