What is this thing that looks like a hard honeycomb? It is a clump of shells of the Worm Snail. But an animal cannot be a worm and a snail at the same time. The animals that made this shell cluster are gastropod mollusks, or snails. “Gastro” means stomach and “pod” means foot…stomach on the foot. Mollusk comes from the French word “mollusque.” It means an animal that makes a shell out of calcium carbonate. When we think of a snail, usually, we think of the little animal with a curled shell. The shell of the Worm Snail is kind of long and wiggly, so it makes people think of a worm. This big chunk of shells broke off of a rock. When the Worm Snails are living on the rock, they ooze out a sticky “net” of mucus. Plankton stick to the net. The Worm Snail brings in the net and eats anything that stuck to it. Hooray for the Worm Snail, which is hard at work purifying our ocean water!


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