The Diet of Mollusks
A mollusk is an invertebrate animal with a soft body, a muscular organ called a "foot" used for movement, and a grouping of internal organs. All mollusks have a sheet-like organ called a "mantle" which secretes the fluids that become the mollusk's shell. Mollusks have a mouth which is sometimes located at the end of a long probing organ and sometimes located on the main body mass. They use this mouth to scavenge for food. The most common mollusks include snails, scallops, oysters, clams and mussels.
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Land Snails
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Snails eat mostly plant matter, using a tongue-like organ called a "radula" to grind their food. Land snails are usually strict herbivores, feeding on a variety of vegetation and plant material. Snails will feed on decaying plants as well as live plants. They also eat fruit, berries and even the bark from trees. Snails have tongue-like organs called "radulas" in their mouths that grind food before digestion. Snails also ingest pieces of rock, such as limestone, to get the calcium needed to keep their shells strong and hard. Their shells protect them from predators and injury.
Aquatic Snails
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Aquatic snails eat microorganisms in the water such as plankton. Aquatic snails eat much the same way as land snails, though their diet is slightly different. Like snails found on land, aquatic snails are mostly herbivores, though they do eat microscopic animals found in the water as well. Mostly, aquatic snails feed on algae, underwater plants and small bits of plant debris found in the water.
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Mussels
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Mussels bury themselves in mud or sand and filter microorganisms and plant debris from the water. Freshwater mussels usually live in lakes, streams and rivers. Such moving waters carry food particles and oxygen to the mussels and wash away their waste. Mussels usually bury themselves at the floor of a body of water, such as a riverbed, and use valves in their bodies to filter the water for microscopic organisms such as plankton. They also filter plant debris from the water. Saltwater muscles are similar, feeding on microorganisms and plant matter found in the ocean.
Scallops
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Scallops secret a sticky substance to stick to rocks and filter their food from the water. Scallops secret a sticky substance that helps them stick to rocks or other underwater fixtures, sometimes even man-made structures such as sunken ships or dock supports. Scallops stick to the fixed object and filter microorganisms from the water. Adult scallops eat mostly plankton.
Oysters
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It can be unsafe to eat raw oysters from polluted water. Like most aquatic mollusks, oysters eat by "filter feeding," meaning that they suck in water using valves and then filter out microorganisms, such as plankton, and plant matter. After they have extracted the edible material, they spit out the excess water. Because some of the waters where oysters reside are polluted, it is sometimes not safe to eat raw oysters because they ingest these toxic chemicals and pass them on to a human that eats them.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit oyster image by Filip Mazurek from Fotolia.com snail image by martini from Fotolia.com Escargot image by Goldfish from Fotolia.com mussel shell on the sand image by timur1970 from Fotolia.com Scallop image by Linda Lunt from Fotolia.com oysters on a plate image by Lombok from Fotolia.com
