Helen Scales

speaker

228 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Helen Scales’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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In Our Time · Seashells · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

It's not got any poison in it.

And as Suzanne said, possibly they're trying to say I'm really dangerous.

But the thing about cone shells, there's about 800 species and they have got incredible variety in the patterns on their shells.

They are a collector's

favorite they have been for for ages people have always wanted um you know these beautiful shells they can be much bigger than this one's only sort of thumb sized um but they can have stripes and spots and and zigzags and all sorts of things going on and these yeah they're nocturnal species they generally live in the seabed during the day so it's the question also is what's going to see these things at all um and and it is a big puzzle firstly how do they make these patterns and that's something that people have looked into and there've been various theories and

Kind of computer models have looked at how you might create patterns like that, possibly through the combination of different chemicals, maybe hormones sort of diffusing through the tissue that makes the shell.

Or possibly it's under neural control.

There could be nerves that are bouncing off each other, sort of switching on and switching off pigment production.

I should say the patterns are being made a bit like an inkjet printer for the most part.

As the shell is being made on that open edge, the newest bit of the shell, a line of pigment can be laid down at the same time.

So, you know, you get a line of ink on an inkjet printer, the next line adds up and up and you get a picture at the end of it.

So that's essentially, for the most part, what mollusks are doing.

Yeah, and so there's theories, you know, it could be that...

Natural selection has just been let off the hook and it's just running wild.

There's no reason to it.

But one theory I do quite like, and again, I don't know if we've got any proof that this is the case, but it's a possibility, is that actually these are, they're essentially the mollusk writing down notes to itself to remind itself where it left off the last time it was making more shell.

Because not all mollusks are constantly making shells.

They are kind of doing it seasonally when the temperature is fluctuating.

favorable when there's food around and there will be kind of stop starts in that production and as you can imagine we've talked about these intricate spirals and the shapes as you know other shapes as well that mollusks grow their shells into you need to know where you left off otherwise it's just going to become an absolute mess so there is some hint i think that that maybe the pigments are somehow they can be sensed by the mollusk they can sort of almost taste perhaps where they were before line themselves up and carry on making more shell

I mean, I should just also say, if you ever see a hermit crab, if you're snorkelling and you ever happen to see one, do hang around.

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