Scutellastra cochlear (Born, 1778) - spoon limpet (interior view) (public display, Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA)

This species is also known as Patella cochlear.

The gastropods (snails & slugs) are a group of molluscs that occupy marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. Most gastropods have a calcareous external shell (the snails). Some lack a shell completely, or have reduced internal shells (the slugs & sea slugs & pteropods). Most members of the Gastropoda are marine. Most marine snails are herbivores (algae grazers) or predators/carnivores.

Limpets are unusual gastropods - their shells are cap-shaped instead of being tightly coiled. Limpets frequent hard substrates in intertidal zones and are algae/biofilm grazers.

The spoon limpet shown above is part of the South African Province: "The huge waves and cool waters of South Africa have produced a molluscan fauna dominated along its rocky shores by large limpets and abalones. Its beaches are often strewn with colorful, offshore cones, trochids and volutes. At certain seasons the cast-off egg-cradles of three species of paper nautiluses are found abundantly on some beaches." [info. from museum signage]

Classification: Animalia, Mollusca, Gastropoda, Patellidae

Locality: unrecorded/undisclosed/unspecified

More info. at: