Orange mollusc

Molluscs

Mollusc Videos

Phyla

  • Molluscs: The Survival Game

Animation

  • Mollusc Animation: Squid Body Plan
  • Mollusc Animation: Nautilus Body Plan
  • Mollusc Animation: Shell Repair
  • Mollusc Animation: Abalone

Behavior

  • Molluscs: Octopus Camouflage
  • Molluscs: Nautilus Regulates Its Buoyancy
  • Molluscs: Moon Snail Preys On Cockles
  • Molluscs: Pycnopodia Chases Abalone
  • Molluscs: Octopus Catching Crab
  • Molluscs: Blue-Ringed Octopus Warning Coloration

Scientist

  • Peter Ward, Paleontologist: The Ancient Nautilus
  • Geerat Vermeij, Evolutionary Biologist: Reading A Shell’s Story

General Info

  • Book with pencil

Role in Ecosystem

  • Bee with arrows around it

Climate

  • Thermometer and waves

Human Interaction

  • Human next to globe

Paleontology

  • Skull of dinosaur
  • Lesson Plan
    Life in the Fast Lane – From Hunted to Hunter
    Lab dissection of a squid, a member of Class Cephalopoda (along with the octopus and nautilus). Supported by several Shape of Life segments, students interpret squid adaptations as a radical case of divergent evolution: A line of ancestral snails abandoned the life of sluggish grazing and foraging in favor of a new niche as speedy open water predators.

    Full Lesson Plan

All Molluscs Lesson Plans

  • Spread out octopus
    Factsheet
    Molluscs: Beauty and Diversity
    The diversity of molluscs shows how a fleshy soft body plan can evolve into a variety of forms.

    Download Factsheet

All Factsheets

  • Closeup of suckers from tentacle of octopus
    Reading
    Molluscs: Armor and Speed, the Survival Game
    "As the tide rises, the closed molluscs opens a fraction to the ocean's food, bathed in its riches. Do not ask what force would do, or if force could. A knife is no use against a fortress."

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All Readings

Creature

Blue Glaucus

A spectacular-looking example of an animal in the plankton is Glaucus, a pelagic (open sea) sea slug. Sea slugs are nudibranchs, in the mollusc phylum. The blue glaucus (Glaucus atlanticus) is also called the blue dragon, sea swallow or blue angel.

More Molluscs

Glaucus

Did You Know?

Some Cephalopods Will Thrive in the Changing Climate

Generally the future of the ocean and its inhabitants, due to the climate crisis, doesn’t give us reason for optimism. But there seems to be hope for some cephalopod species to thrive.

More Did You Know?

School of Squid

Shape of Life Blog

Octopus Intelligence

“Brainy, colorful, fast, sophisticated, strange, inspiring – cephalopods have been on the planet for about 500 million years and have fascinated humans for thousands of year.” Octopus, Squid & Cuttlefish: A Visual, Scientific Guide To The Oceans.

More Blogs

Closeup of E_dofleini