Fascinating Shells: An Introduction to 121 of the World’s Most Wonderful Mollusks

"The shells shown in this book belong to one of the most diverse groups of creatures, the mollusks. These are invertebrates - soft-bodied animals without an internal skeleton - and include snails, oysters, cuttlefishes, and chitons. Curator at the Natural History Museum, London and mollusk expert, Andreia Salvador, gives readers a visual tour of some of the fascinating shells in the Museum's mollusca collection, which is one of the most comprehensive and significant in the world and contains over eight million specimens. Salvador's descriptions explain the meaning behind shell names, such as the hundred-eyed cowry, named after Greek mythological giant Argus Panoptes, "the all-seeing one"; how shells' appearances translate into defense strategies, such as the zigzag nerite, which has varying patterns that make it hard for predators to recognize them consistently; and the shells' inhabitants' behavior, such as the amber snail, which eats earthworms by "sucking them up like spaghetti". Interesting Shells presents portraits of all these and others from the Natural History Museum, London's shell collections, one of the largest resources of its kind in the world. Each portrait includes a caption, which reveals the most interesting biological, historical, and geographic details"--