Sea Shells! :)

First of all...... i think it's a YESS on the yankee visa! lol You-ess-AY here i comes!

had my thingy today to get my visa... and i'm like 99.9999999999% sure i got it...

second.. we went to the each yesterday!! was cool as! picked up like a bajillion wee tiny lil shells... some were pink and stuff.. way cool!! i'm quite obsessed with them at the moment!! soooo i was wondering.... what the hell makes them different colours.. cuz i know fo sho that it aint cuz they eat alot of beet root or carrots!! lol....


Hmmmm........ i can't find like anything!! some idiot even said they're formed by rock erosion?!?!?!?!? WTFlippp? ..

SO what i've gathered is this so far...

they secret like jelly stuff from their mantle.. (the jelly thing in on the inside layer of the shell) and the jelly stuff has calcium carbonate crystals in it (yeah wee teeny weeny ones) and they grow to form the new layers of the shell!

so some scientists found out that them mollusks have like a butt load of calcium carbonate in their blood cells...(cool thing is that they could see what blood had the calcumb carb in cuz it was like shiny blood!! =]) and they were like.. hmmm i wonder if it's the calcium carbonate from the blood is the same calcuim that's being secreted in the jelly stuff and making the shell... SO... they made a lil hole in the shell to "induce repair" 48 hours later they found that there was 10% more shiny blood at the place where it was being repaired!

Cool eh? but still doesn't explain the different colours?!?!? aaaah!! i found it! ok so it is actually about what they eat.. oopsy don;t i look like a giant dumbass!! lol
in hotter places there are a lot more different coloured shells... but in cold places (IRELAND!!!!) they are mostly the same colour and usually darker! different foods eaten by the lil creatures cause different pigments to be made in the mantle and then they are "calcified" (ooh BIG WORD!) and so that's what gives them thier colour!
also the pattern has to do with their eating too! .. so if the pigment secretion is contiuous the lines will be in a spiral... but if it's periodic then they'll be lil spots or flecks! and.. if pigment is secreted at the same rate the colour will be uniform.. but if not then it'll be all wavy and stuff!

How cool is that! their pattern and colour depends on what they eat and how often they eat it!! Cool AS!

Wow!! i'm like smarter than i was like 30 minutes ago!