Seashells
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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What counts as a 'seashell' and which animals make them?
Noin, lounasjahdissa mukana. Lounasjahdi, lounasjahdi. Mä niin voitan tän lounasjahdin. Kyllä, Nesten liikenneasemilla on käynnissä lounasjahdi, josta voit voittaa kuukauden lounaat. Mukaan arvontaan osallistut joka kerta, kun käytät plussakorttiasi Nesten liikenneasemilla toinen elokuuta asti. Lisätiedot neste.fi kautta plussa.
This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. Botticelli's Venus emerging from a giant scallop shell. Vishnu's sacred horn, Panchajanya. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl's talisman cut from a conch shell. Seashells appear in the mythologies of countless cultures. The urge to collect shells seems to be as old as our species. We've used them as decoration, currency, musical instruments. But shells aren't just beautiful objects washed up on our beaches. Many belong to one of the most diverse groups of the animal kingdom, growing remarkable shapes, patterns and structures which tell us about the Earth's oceans – past, present and future.
With me to discuss seashells are Suzanne Williams, merit researcher at the Natural History Museum, Liz Harper, professor of evolutionary malacology in the Department of Earth Sciences and fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, and Helen Scales, marine biologist and author. Helen, I'm going to come to you first. The word seashells is not really a scientific term, is it? So what are we talking about when we say seashells?
Well, in my mind, when we say seashells, we're talking about things that are made by a group of really diverse, abundant marine animals that are called mollusks. That's the big group name for them is mollusks. They're invertebrates, so they have no bones. They're soft, squishy things, but they tend to, many of them live inside. They create a hard outer layer, an exoskeleton. And that is the seashell. It can serve lots of different purposes. First and foremost, really, it's their home. For many of them, it's a portable home. They can carry it around with them. When they move, many of them even have a front door which they can slam shut to keep predators out and to keep water in there as well if they're the kind of mollusk that lives on the shoreline and perhaps has to put up with the tide going out.
These mollusks, they live all through the ocean. They are incredibly cosmopolitan, everywhere from the deepest seas to... extreme environments like hydrothermal vents. They swim through the water column. They occupy the shoreline. Those are the ones I think we know the best, really, because those are the shells that tend to wash up most easily on beaches. And then some of them made it into fresh water. Some came out onto land. Those are the slugs and snails. Slugs have lost their shells, but the snails that that eat your vegetables and your flowers in your garden. You know, their ancestors were mollusks that lived in the sea. They live in forests, they live at the top of mountains. I think the only thing mollusks that make shells that they haven't done, the only thing they haven't done is learn to fly, pretty much everything else.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:06
2
What counts as a 'seashell' and which animals make them?
1:06–20:20
3
How have humans used seashells historically as tools, jewelry and currency?
20:20–31:26
4
When and why did mollusks first evolve shells during the Cambrian explosion?
31:26–39:27
5
What are molluscan shells made of and how do animals build them?
39:27–49:40
6
What different classes of mollusks produce the shells we find on beaches?
49:40–57:04