A relic from oceans long ago, the chambered nautilus was swimming in the ocean before dinosaurs walked the Earth. This ancient weirdo has remained relatively unchanged for 400 million years. It’s eyesight it poor, but it has a great sense of smell. It has an incredibly strong grip thanks to the over 90 tentacle-like appendages called cirri. While this weirdo’s shell is large, but the nautilus itself is only 10 inches long. Many have heard of this weirdo before because of Fibbinaci’s spiral and golden ratio. But mathematicians disagree that the nautilus’s shell is an example of that, saying that there is too much variability amongst shell shapes (though its not impossible to find one that fits the perfect spiral).
Where are the chambers?
Believe it or not this weirdo is a cephalopod, meaning they are related to squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. They differ from other cephalopods in 2 major ways; it cannot change color, and its squishy body is protected by a shell. Other cephalopods evolved to no longer need one, not the nautilus! The above photo shows inside the shell where all the chambers are. They’re born with 4 chambers, but as they grow more sections are walled off. They use their shell for protection, but also for buoyancy! To move vertically in the water column, they move air and liquid around the chambers through a tube called the siphuncle (more air means positive buoyancy and they move up!). The nautilus’s shell is a tribute to how long it has endured on this planet, and unfortunately it could now be its downfall.
A double edged sword
The chambered nautilus survived 5 mass extinctions, but their population is struggling with this potential 6th one. They suffer from climate change related issues like everyone else, but the biggest problem is people harvesting them for their shells. I haven’t found records of anyone who relies on them for sustenance, implying their only harvesting purpose for us is decorative. Shell harvesting is unregulated and the nautilus hasn’t been classified as threatened or endangered. How can you help? Be careful where you buy your nautilus shells! Not getting them at all is the best option, but asking about where they come from can’t hurt either. Another option for the cephalopod enthusiast is to collect fossils from their extinct cousin, the ammonite. Since they’re already extinct and easy to find, it’s a less invasive alternative.
Check out this video to learn more about the Chambered Nautilus!
Months
after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in “The
Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart, left Hollywood and joined the US
Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II.
An
accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US
Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early
1942. With his celebrity status, he was assigned to attending rallies
and training younger pilots.
Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied.
He wanted to fly combat missions. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the
war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him
to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.
Stewart,
now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months
flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Top brass tried to keep the
popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would
hear nothing of it.
Determined to lead by example, he assigned
himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was
one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit. But his
wartime service came at a high personal price.
In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress (PTS).
When
he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had
lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he
did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the
air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130
men, most of whom he knew personally).
He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.
As
one of Stewart’s biographers put it, “Every decision he made [during
the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to
Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”
In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Actors
and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of
George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting.
His PTSD was being captured on film for millions to see.
But
despite Stewart’s inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for
the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most
accomplished and loved actors in American history.
When asked in
1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions
over Nazi Germany, he said, “This country’s conscience is bigger than
all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when
we’ll have to fight.”
This holiday season, as many of us watch
the classic Christmas film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it’s also a fitting
time to remember the sacrifices of those who gave up so much to serve
their country during wartime.
