Zoo Visitors Watch On As Man Appears To Walk On Air

Zoo visitors in China gawped up at the heavens in amazement as a man appeared to walk on air. Watch here:

The moment was caught on camera at Northeast Tiger Park in Changchun, in the north-eastern province of Jilin, and shows a man trudging along in the sky, seemingly defying gravity.

Clearly though, he was not defying gravity - he was walking along netting over a bird enclosure.

Still, it looks pretty cool, and you can see why visitors were halted in their tracks.

Optical illusions like this are always circulating online; last month, it was a floating ship that had people baffled.

The snap taken in Falmouth, Cornwall, appeared to show a ship hovering above the water - but it was actually the result of a specific combination of weather conditions.

The unusual optical illusion is known as Fata Morgana, and is created when the sun heats the atmosphere above the land or sea, which results in a gradient of temperatures.

Apex/David Morris

BBC meteorologist David Braine explained: "Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it.

"Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears.

"Superior mirages can produce a few different types of images - here a distant ship appears to float high above its actual position, but sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible."

Historian and author Tim Maltin reckons this phenomenon might have played a part in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Maltin believes the 100ft iceberg that sunk the historic ship may have been missed by lookouts on board because of a similar Fata Morgana mirage event.

Speaking to The Sun, Maltin explained that the phenomenon may have meant the iceberg wasn't spotted against the white haze along the horizon known as a 'mirage strip'.

He said: "The Titanic sank in the freezing waters of the Labrador Current in the North Atlantic, surrounded by dozens of large icebergs, some of which were 200 feet high.

"But above the level of the top of those icebergs much warmer air drifted across from the nearby warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, trapping cold air underneath it.

"This created the same thermal inversion conditions at Titanic's crash site as seen along the coast of Britain recently, creating a band of light haze above which ships appeared to float in the sky."

Topics: Viral, Optical Illusion, China

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey