Carrier Shells and Their Hoarding Habits

This is not a craft project; it’s a natural defense! As they go through life, marine snails in the genus Xenophora adhere things to their shells, presumably making them harder to eat and maybe even harder to identify as a potential meal. The one at lower right includes the long, straight spine of a sea urchin and the tusk-shaped shells of scaphopods (a lesser-known mollusk). The one at upper right has a spongey protuberance that’s actually one sponge atop another, and the one at lower left makes use of wood and a tubeworm casing. They all incorporate the shells of other snails, and the two at upper left include shells of bivalves, too. Shared by Associate Curator of Invertebrate Zoology Vanessa Delnavaz, MA, they’re among millions of shells preserved in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s collections.