Photo by Cassie Griffin 



A curious animal and its house 



Man has always been fascinated 

 with the edge where land and water 

 meet. Part of that fascination has been 

 with seashells, the houses of soft-bodied 

 animals called mollusks. 



Mollusks, which predate man, are 

 believed to be more than 600 million 

 years old. Originally only marine 

 animals, they have adapted to many 

 different lifestyles and can be found in 

 mud, sand, rocks, on land, and in fresh 

 and salt waters. Worldwide, there are 

 approximately 100,000 species, and in 

 North Carolina, over 1,000 species are 

 known to exist in estuarine and marine 

 waters. Some familiar kinds are 

 oysters, clams, scallops, and conchs. 



The two largest classes of mollusks 

 are gastropods and bivalves. Gas- 

 tropods usually have a single spiral- or 

 cone-shaped shell, and bivalves have 

 two shells, or valves, hinged tightly 

 with strong muscles. Bivalves are 

 basically passive, filtering food from 

 the water, and are the prey of gas- 

 tropods. Lining the mouth of gas- 

 tropods is a radular ribbon with teeth 

 which, in whelks, acts like a scraping 

 tool. With muscle contractions and 

 suction, a whelk can pry open clams. 



But gastropods aren't the only 

 predators of bivalves, nor are they safe 



from predation themselves. Man has 

 been using mollusks for food since the 

 first clam was cracked open and a 

 delicious meat discovered inside. The 

 shells of mollusks have also provided 

 man with inspiration for greater 

 functional and aesthetic purposes. 



The early coastal Indians in North 

 Carolina were dependent upon many 

 mollusks for food. According to Lundie 

 Mauldin, marine education specialist 

 for Sea Grant, the oyster and clam 

 shells left in refuse piles, or middens, 

 are now clues for permanent or tem- 

 porary Indian settlements in coastal 

 areas. "There is a tale Down East in 

 Carteret County," she says, "about a 

 shell causeway from Harkers Island to 

 Cape Lookout-Shackleford Banks. 

 They say the Algonkian Indians who 

 lived there centuries ago had dumped 

 so many shells in the sound that they 

 could walk across it." Although the In- 

 dians are gone now, the local people 

 say that remnants of the causeway 

 remain. 



Indians were also some of the 

 earliest shell collectors. Some of the 

 hard, durable shells left over from a 

 feast were attached to poles and used 

 for digging, or sharpened on one edge 

 and used for scraping. Conchs were 



valued as ceremonial drinking vessels. 

 The Indian money, called wampum, 

 was made from circular shapes, cut out 

 of clam shells, which were pierced and 

 strung together. White wampum was 

 considered less precious than the pur- 

 ple shells cut from the small, colored 

 part of the shell. It is interesting that 

 the Latin name given to the hard clam 

 is Mercenaria mercenaria, which 

 means "money." 



Many other cultures throughout 

 time have been fascinated with 

 mollusks. Shells were found in the 

 tomb of the Egyptian King Tut and 

 among the artifacts of primitive 

 African tribes. Roman senators wore 

 togas bordered in purple from the dye 

 of murex shells. Royalty used scallops 

 and other shells to embellish the family 

 coat of arms. 



Artists have borrowed many of the 

 graphic qualities of seashells, from the 

 classic painting by Botticelli of the 

 goddess Venus coming out of the sea 

 on a scallop (The Birth of Venus, 

 c. 1480) to the stylized, bright yellow 

 trademark of Shell Oil Company. A 

 scallop was chosen to represent the 

 company in honor of its founder, 

 Marcus Samuel, who collected 

 seashells as a hobby. 



