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Sunday 27 April 2014

Clam

The record for the longest-lived animal belongs to a ocean quahog - a type of deep-sea clam - that was 507-years-old when it died in 2006. Ming the Mollusc – named after the Chinese dynasty on the throne when its life began - was dredged alive from the bottom of the North Atlantic near Iceland in 2006 by researchers. They then put it in a freezer, as is normal practice, unaware of its age.  It was only when it was taken to a laboratory that scientists from Bangor University studied it and concluded it was hundreds of years old.  The discovery made it into the Guinness Book of World Records however by this time, sadly it was too late for Ming the Mollusc.

Left valve of the shell of /Ming, https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/3222/pdf

The Deep Sea Clam of the North Atlantic takes around 100 years to reach the length of just one third of an inch.

The world’s largest clams weigh almost 500 pounds.

The saying, "Happy as a Clam" is short for "Happy as a Clam at High Tide," since they have no predators that attack during high tide and can roam around freely.

Once a giant clam picks a spot to live on a reef, it does not move for the rest of its life.

Clams feed on plankton by drawing in water containing food using an incurrent siphon. The food is then filtered out of the water by the gills and swept toward the mouth on a layer of mucus. The water is then expelled from the animal by an ex-current siphon.

Clams are considered non-kosher along with all other shellfish.

The clam shell has three layers. The top one is called mother-of-pearl because it is a coating of pearl material.

Sea silk is an extremely fine, rare, and valuable fabric made from the long silky filaments which are secreted by a gland in the foot of a clam (Pinna nobilis) to anchor itself to the ocean floor. The material has been used since ancient times by Greek, Roman and Chinese cultures.

Clams do not have any of the five senses - smell, taste, sight, hearing, and feeling.

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