A retractable foot, a siphon for sucking up water, powerful muscles, and, sometimes, a pearl ... and mussels, clams are bivalves, a kind of mollusk that's encased in a shell made of two valves ...

These translucent animals are known to swim inside clams and oysters to hide from ... that are in its calcium carbonate shell, the mollusc creates a material called nacre, commonly known as ...

“I thought it was a shell or something ... thing.” The clam that it came from is a northern quahog called Mercenaria mercenaria, and it usually produces porcelain-like pearls according to ...

Pearls are made by marine oysters and freshwater mussels as a natural defence against an irritant such as a parasite entering their shell or damage to their fragile body. The oyster or mussel slowly ...