Baselining Puns

A few years ago a group of researchers was working to find out if the shape of a snail's shell is at all dependent on aerodynamics. One of the ways to test this is to give the snails different shells in different shapes to see how this impacts them.

Obviously, they needed a baseline measure. The researchers decided the baseline--instead of being the shell that came with the snail--should be the snail with no shell.

Many thought that the removal of the shell would allow the snails to move more quickly but the researchers found that when they removed the shells from the snails they became more sluggish.