The Owl Limpet

The oval object in the picture is not part of the rock. This is an animal. It is the Owl Limpet. The Owl Limpet has a very hard shell protecting it from predators. Underneath, it has a suction cup-like pad of tissue called the foot. The Owl Limpet will tighten up this foot when a predator tries to pry it off of the rocks. The suction created is so great that the predator cannot pull up the limpet. A female limpet is very territorial. This means that she wants total control over her little special area on the rock. She will scoot other creatures away so that her little “farm” will grow enough algae for her to eat. Do you see three other smaller Rough Limpets? It seems that the two riding piggy back are eating algae that has grown on the Owl Limpet’s shell. For thousands of years, tribal people here would eat Owl Limpets. First, the people had to pry the limpets off of the rocks with a sharp tool and remove them from the shell. Limpets are incredibly tough to chew because of the tissue making up the foot. So tribal people would lay the limpets out on a hard flat surface and pound them with a special tool until the steaks were tender. Finally, the Owl Limpets would be fried or used in soups. MILLIONS of people moved to southern California in the last hundred years and they ate way too many limpets. So now limpets, and many other edible ocean animals, are now protected by law in many places along the coast.


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