Once again my curiosity hit me. We were on the beach enjoying the nice breeze so we decided we would just go further along since it was low tide anyway. There were plenty of rock pools there because when the tide came up it would leave water in gaps from
The rocks. Sean(brother)and I would search in them because we would always find starfish, hermit crabs and other little sea creatures. But today I wasn't interested in those creatures,
I was looking at a shell going perfectly up like a spiral and shades of orange around it.
It was there and then when my curiosity hit me as I thought to myself, how are shells formed?
Obviously leading me to research the whole process.
When I see a shell I think of it as a beautiful decoration for my house. But for animals with slimy, fragile bodies called mollusks, it IS there home.
These creatures ingest salt and chemicals by finding land masses and eroding them. They produce outer shells as they excrete the calcium carbonate. The more that's excreted the larger and stronger the shell becomes. But everyone has to die at a point. So when the mollusks die the remains of the body will be eaten by ocean predators leaving it to wash up on the beach.
So remember every time you hold a shell, your holding a whole house.
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