What's inside a clam? A retractable foot, a siphon for sucking up water, powerful muscles, and, sometimes, a pearl. And you thought ... mollusk that's encased in a shell made of two valves ...

To culture freshwater mussels, workers slightly open their shells, cut small slits into the mantle tissue inside both shells ... old Buddhas are not true pearls but shell mabes.

Pearls are formed inside a mussel or oyster (or any mollusk with a shell) as a form of self-defense—their beauty is, amazingly, secondary to their function. When a mollusk senses that its shell ...

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 ...

An incredible process begins when a foreign material, or parasite, makes its way inside the shell of an oyster and begins causing damage. The intruder can threaten the life of ...

What is it? Well, many of the manicures feature this ethereal, pearly, opalescent finish, a bit like the mother-of-pearl-insides of a mollusc shell. So there, I’m calling it: shell nails are ...

giant scallop shell from The Shell Factory’s Pick A Pearl attraction, which let people catch live oysters, open them and find real pearls inside; A working, animatronic Zoltar fortune ...

Cultured pearls are formed by the same process, but instead of the irritant entering the shell accidentally ... layers of growth from the very inside out. More from So Expensive ...

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