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

As one does.

Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

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.