Deep, Deep Down, Your Shell Isn’t Too Bad
It’s the heart of your shell that makes the difference; it’s the wholeness of your body that makes the sentence.
The characteristics of mollusks are having a circulatory system, a body structure, and being able to obtain oxygen.
A mollusk’s mantle is related to its shell in that the mantle produces a hard shell.
If the cilia on a mollusk’s gills did not work, the mollusk would not have any oxygen from the water moving into its bloodstream. This would effectively kill it.
The three groups of mollusks are gastropods, bivalves, and cephalopods.
Gastropods obtain food and move—they have a single external shell or no shell at all. Bivalves obtain food, move, and protect themselves from external irritations (e.g., grain of sand getting stuck between a bivalve’s mantle and shell.)—they have two shells held together by hinges and strong muscles, and cephalopods obtain food “whose foot is adapted to form tentacles around its mouth.”, have a nervous system, and move by jet propulsion.
The foot structures of a snail, clam and octopus are all similar in that they all help the organism move, and are different in that they all help organisms move differently. The foot structure of a snail, for example, helps it move by oozing a carpet of slippery mucus, which helps it move faster. The foot structure of a clam, for example, helps the clam dig itself a hole and pull itself down. The foot structure of an octopus, for example, helps the octopus jet-propel itself away in the direction it pleases and adapts to form tentacles around its mouth.
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7 Responses to “Deep, Deep Down, Your Shell Isn’t Too Bad”
On March 12, 2009 at 4:43 am
nice shot. quiet useful information
On March 12, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Those little guys are a terror in the garden. I used to keep a pan of beer for them.
On March 16, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Up close. This is a nice shot. I don’t have trouble with them here in Florida, however, in California they were nuisances. Thank you for sharing this information.
On March 28, 2009 at 9:08 pm
ew!
hate those things…all of the damned things crawl across my porch.
On March 29, 2009 at 7:10 pm
aw, they aren’t too bad 7…:D
-dov
On April 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm
We used to harvest these guys, even as they were trying to harvest our strawberries. Good information.
On April 7, 2009 at 12:03 am
Had an epidemic of the lil fellers one year…a lot of them learned to fly without benefit of wings. They are fascinating, but not very good for lettuce beds.
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