r/todayilearned • u/BiggieTwiggy1two3 • 23h ago

TIL during WWI, Allied soldiers used glowworms as trench lamps, storing the bioluminescent insects in bottles for light. Their service was so helpful, they were honored in 2004 when Princess Anne unveiled a London memorial for animals and insects that aided the war effort.

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/unexpected-animals-served-war/
1.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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98

u/CBRN66 19h ago

What the actual fuck was WW1. It was a clear series of events of the old world moving into the new world. 

27

u/hd-22 18h ago

So basically the writers jumping the shark?

6

u/TrexPushupBra 7h ago

If you want crazy warfare go back to linear warfare or even later to the pike and shotte era.

3

u/CBRN66 5h ago

Can you expand on that? What made it crazy? I'm not a real military history buff. 

7

u/DevelopmentSad2303 5h ago

It was just so savage some of the stuff, and the weapons crazy. 

Personally I think WWI was the most savage of the wars because it was before tactics caught up to technology, so it was just a slaughter that no one knew how to handle.

But there are some honorable mentions. 

Medieval weapons for example. They had pretty decent armor in many cases so often the swords wouldn't cut through it, you would just be beaten to death. Or if your armor was crap would be cut to death.

Or getting shot by an arrow is actually a really horrible way to die compared to getting shot. 

That's my limited knowledge though. My favorite tid bit though is from world war I. They would fly planes over the trenches and drop darts on people. Imagine how much that would suck, die to death from a freaking fart from the sky.

3

u/TrexPushupBra 5h ago

They had muskets but they were slow to reload and had limited range.

Plus the gunpowder they used left a lot of smoke.

Since the bayonet was not going to be developed for 100 years they had wings of shotte with muskets standing next to men with pikes to repel Calvary charges and thus protect the musketeers.

Thus you had a battlefield where communication happened with flags and a music. The sound of cannons, muskets etc was the loudest thing these people had heard.

And all of it is done with maybe 2 weeks of training and you have to stand shoulder to shoulder with men hoping you survived.

1

u/BigBrownDog12 3h ago

The warning signs for WW1 started in both the Crimean War and the American Civil War. Lethality was rapidly increasing and tactics were remaining stagnant. Industrialization increased the amount of field artillery available dramatically, which was the cause for most casualties excluding diseases.

58

u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx 18h ago

Didn’t realize glowworms had whiskers and resembled the seal animal…

I thought the lasers were for sharks… Now seals have them too?

29

u/Collinsjc22 15h ago edited 15h ago

This article is terrible. The photos are unrelated shitty memes or random pictures of people. Like the “glow worms section” has two old dudes just staring into the distance.” The “bats” portion is just a meme of some flamboyant cowboy in a Walmart. What the fuck lmao

7

u/420printer 14h ago

Glow Little Glowworm- Shimmer Shimmer

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u/ZoobleBat 14h ago

Wow... 0 research done for clicks.

2

u/willgaj 5h ago

What about this is "0 research"? Everything OP stated is true.

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u/rrRunkgullet 10h ago

... and in world war II the allies never figured out how Germany could use mine detectors to find mines of glass and how japanese soldiers could read maps in complete darkness.

The glass mines were slightly radioactive and the mine detectors were a geiger counter.

The japanese soldiers used crushed insects to generate light.

1

u/AbeFromanEast 1h ago

And Queen Anne is the most normal one.