The time Larry Page’s secret flying car engineers dressed in chicken suits and launched a glider into the water

In the movies, engineers working on super-secret whiz-bang inventions wear lab coats and safety glasses.

In real life, they also wear chicken suits.

Here's footage of "The Chicken Whisperers" winning a Red Bull-sponsored "Flugtag" event, where competitors launch homemade gliders off a dock. Turns out the Whisperers all work for Zee.Aero, which turns out to be a flying car company bankrolled by Google co-founder Larry Page.

The story of Zee.Aero -- as well as the story of Kitty Hawk, another Page-backed flying car company -- is detailed in a fascinating new story in Bloomberg Businessweek today.

The only real unanswered question is why workers at a super-secretive flying car company backed by one of the world's richest men would dress up in chicken suits and perform a synchronized dance routine in public, before flinging themselves into the water.

But maybe that's because it's obvious: Because they can.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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