• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Recipes
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
Home » Seafood » Mollusks

Mollusks

Mollusks mostly live in the water, but not always: land-based snails and slugs are Mollusks, too.

Mollusks are invertebrates, meaning they have no backbones. Their soft bodies are “single segments” — all one piece. If you wonder whether this is true of an octopus, because surely that has “legs” that are a distinct part of their body, they are actually all one part of the same body, sort of like gloop dripping through your fingers — there are no joints.

Most Mollusks secrete calcium carbonate to make shells that will outlive them for quite a while.

There are three types of Mollusks: bivalves, cephalopods and gastropods.

  • Bivalves includes things with two shells, such as oysters, cockles, mussels and clams;
  • Cephalopods include octopus, squid and cuttlefish. They have no skeleton nor any shells;
  • Gastropods include snails, both land and sea, limpets and whelks.

Related entries

  • Abalone
  • Periwinkles
  • Whelks

Other names

AKA: Molluscs
Scientific Name: Phylum Mollusca
Italian: Molluschi
French: Mollusques
German: Weichtiere
Spanish: Moluscos

This page first published: Jul 1, 2004 · Updated: Jun 17, 2020.

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · Information on this site is Copyright © 2025· Feel free to cite correctly, but copying whole pages for your website is content theft and will be DCMA'd.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Skylar! This is a fake profile talking about how I switched to a paleo diet and it helped my eczema and I grew 4". Trust me, I'm an online doctor.

More about me →

Popular

  • E.D. Smith Pumpkin Purée
    E.D. Smith recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Libby's Pumpkin Pie
    Libby’s recipe for pumpkin pie
  • Pie crust
    Pie Crust Recipe
  • Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham
    Smokey Maple Pepper Glaze for Ham

You can duplicate your homepage's trending recipes section in the sidebar to reinforce the internal linking.

We no longer recommend using a search bar, newsletter form or category drop-down menu in the sidebar. See the Modern Sidebar post for details.

If the block editor is not narrower than usual, simply save the page and refresh it.

Search

    Today is

  • Onion Ring Day
    Basket of onion rings
  • Chocolate Eclair Day
    Chocolate eclairs with chocolate cream filling

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright enforced!
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Site

  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · The text on this site is © Copyright.