Sea Creatures In the world of the seahorse, the father carries the eggs in a pouch, not the mother. Because the seahorse has such an unusual shape, many people don't realize it is really a fish. If you look closely at a living seahorse, you can see that it has transparent fins that it uses to move around. The seahorse tail, however, is very unusual for a fish. It uses its tail to grab onto eel grass and other underwater plants.
The starfish may move very slowly, but its arms are strong enough to pry open an oyster. The starfish wraps around the oyster and pulls steadily, and finally, the oyster's muscles are no longer able to hold the shells closed. The hinge loosens, and the starfish turns its stomach inside out in order to eat the oyster inside.
This is the chambered nautilus. The animal inside begins life in a tiny room, or chamber. When it grows too large for the room, it seals the old room behind it and then builds a new room. Eventually, it ends up in the outermost, large chamber, with all the other rooms it lived in spiraling behind it.
The conch shell is a favorite shell, due to its beautiful pink and orange "lips." Certain types of conch shells-usually, the large queen conchs-are used to make a type of jewelry called a cameo.
Scallops have a row of turquoise eyes along the outer edge of the body. Scallops swim by opening and closing their shells, forcing out water in a little jet. If they are being attacked and can't swim fast enough, they bury themselves in the sand.
The moon snail drills a hole in the shell of its "dinner" (moon snails love to eat oysters, for example) and sucks the animal out.
The murex has a wonderfully pointy shell. Long ago, certain kinds of murex shells were used by the Phoenicians to make dye for clothing. The snail inside the murex shell gave out a yellow liquid which turned into purple dye when it was boiled. The dye cost a lot of money to make, and only very wealthy and powerful people wore clothes of this rich purple color.
The animal inside the limpet shell is able to stick like glue to rocks because it sends out mucus from the the bottom of its "foot". The mucus acts like glue, holding fast to the rock.
The jingle shell is very thin and usually a gold or silver color. They often have a round hole near the edge. The animal in the shell stretches out a "cable" from its body through the hole in the shell. The "cable" attaches the shell to rocks, other shells, the backs of lobsters or the bottom of a ship. |
This fossil of an ammonite shows you what it
would look like inside the nautilus if it were cut
in half. Ammonites are sea creatures that lived
millions of years ago, and they are very similar
in shape to the chambered nautilus. 
