Mollusk
23 mollusk organisms and their business parallels
Abalone
Red abalone are large sea snails that graze on kelp, growing thick iridescent shells prized for jewelry and meat considered a delicacy. Unlike sea urc...
Argonaut
Argonauts are octopuses that build shells - but unlike nautilus shells which are true body parts, argonaut shells are secreted by specialized arms and...
Blanket Octopus
The blanket octopus displays the most extreme sexual size dimorphism in the animal kingdom. Females grow to 6 feet and weigh up to 40,000 times more t...
Blue Dragon Sea Slug
The blue dragon sea slug is a three-centimeter floating predator that hunts Portuguese man o' war—one of the ocean's most venomous creatures. It's imm...
Blue-Ringed Octopus
Blue-ringed octopuses are golf-ball sized but carry enough venom to kill 26 adult humans. Their bright blue rings are a distributed warning system - i...
Common Octopus
Octopuses solve complex problems - opening jars, navigating mazes, recognizing individual humans - despite having evolved intelligence completely inde...
Cone Snail
Cone snails are slow-moving mollusks that hunt fast fish through biochemical weaponry. They fire a hollow, barbed tooth like a harpoon, injecting veno...
Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish are biological billboards with split-screen capabilities. They change skin patterns in real-time to communicate graded threat levels - mild...
Desert Snail
Desert snails survive extreme arid conditions through estivation remarkably similar to lungfish. They seal their shell opening with a hardened mucus l...
Eastern Oyster
Oysters are the temperate zone's answer to coral reefs. A single oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water daily, removing algae, sediment, and polluta...
Giant Clam
Giant clams can reach 4 feet across and weigh 500 pounds, making them the largest bivalves ever to exist. But their real innovation is farming. Like c...
Giant Pacific Octopus
Giant Pacific octopuses can reach 16 feet across and 110 pounds - the largest octopus species - while maintaining the distributed intelligence that de...
Hawaiian Bobtail Squid
Hawaiian bobtail squid have evolved perhaps the most studied symbiosis in bioluminescence. Like anglerfish, they don't produce their own light—they cu...
Hawaiian Bobtail Squid
Euprymna scolopes, the Hawaiian bobtail squid, represents the host side of biology's best-studied animal-microbe symbiosis. Every night, newly hatched...
Hawaiian Land Snail
Hawaiian tree snails achieved extraordinary diversity - over 750 species evolved on islands totaling just 16,000 square kilometers. Single valleys har...
Humboldt Squid
Humboldt squid are aggressive pack hunters that coordinate attacks through rapid color-changing communication. Schools of hundreds hunt together at ni...
Mimic Octopus
The mimic octopus impersonates at least 15 different species - lionfish, flatfish, sea snakes, jellyfish - selecting its disguise based on the predato...
Mussels
Mussels are competitive dominants in rocky intertidal zones. Without predation by Pisaster starfish, mussels grow explosively and smother rock surface...
Nautilus
The nautilus is a living fossil cephalopod whose basic design dates back 500 million years - predating sharks, fish, and most complex life. While its...
Nudibranch
Nudibranchs are shell-less sea slugs, apparently vulnerable yet remarkably well-defended. Their secret: they eat cnidarians (anemones, hydroids) and s...
Ocean Quahog
A quahog clam named Ming was 507 years old when researchers accidentally killed it while determining its age. This makes ocean quahogs the longest-liv...
Ocean Quahog
An ocean quahog clam nicknamed 'Ming' lived 507 years before researchers accidentally killed it during collection in 2006—the oldest known individual...
Sea Hare
Sea hares are large sea slugs that defend themselves with ink and noxious secretions. When disturbed, they release purple ink clouds that obscure visi...