My Late Turkey Day Post

Happy Thanksgiving y'all!
I didn't post yesterday because I was with my family nad friedns eating a ton of good food. And I'm sure all of you guys were doing the same thing.
But no, I want to do my "Turkey Day " post.

I will start by showing you some Turkey Wings!!!!

 

The generic Thanksgiving shell! Turkey Wings are also called Zebra Arks. In the Caribbean thousands of tons of these beautiful mollusks are harvested to be canned and eaten each year. This is not goo at all (obviously)! Especially because Turkey Wings are very important in their ecosystems and food webs as prey, plankton feeders and substrate for benthic animals.

 

And this here is the Mossy Ark. Looks almost identical to the Turkey Wing, right? But, they are two different shells, even if they do belong to the same genus: Arca.

 

And here are the two shells side by side. Mossy Arks on the left, Turkey Wings on the right. From the front, you can see how different these shells look in terms of coloring. The Turkey Wing has distinct, precise brown and white stripes. The Mossy Ark, on the other hand, is often just a mottled whitish brown.

 

And now, from the back. This might be a bit hard to see, but another way to tell the shells apart is by looking at the top rim of their shells. The Mossy Arks (on the right again) have a very curvy rim- compromised of two curves. The top rim of the Turkey Wings, however, is pretty straight.

 

And now, I wanted to show the distinctions between two different shells.

 

I always thought that this was a regular Common Atlantic Auger, just a freak one. However, it is a Gray Atlantic Auger. These mollusks are active hunters and they prey on worms. They can slide really fast (for a snail, :D ) on their foot. When they reach a worm they lunge and stab it with its poisonous, radular tooth.

 

And now this is a Common American Auger. They are hunters and prey on worms too.

And now for a comparison of the two species...

 

The Common American Auger (left) and Gray Atlantic Auger (right). You can see that the Gray Atlantic Auger is much smoother, without the many small ridges that the Common American Auger has.

 

Finally the Common American Auger is lighter colored. It is orange, yellow and chestnut, while the Gray Atlantic Auger is darker brown and slightly purple.

 

Well, that's it for today guys! Gotta go!

See y'all,

Lava of Ocean Dawn :D