Human interactions with molluscs
Useful interactions with molluscs range from their use as food, where species as diverse as snails and squid are eaten in many countries, to the employment of molluscs as shell money and to make dyestuffs and musical instruments, for personal adornment with seashells, pearls, or mother-of-pearl, as items to be collected, as fictionalised sea monsters, and as raw materials for craft items such as Sailor's Valentines.
In popular culture, the snail is known for its stereotypical slowness, while the octopus and giant squid have featured in literature since classical times as monsters of the deep.
[6] Seashells including the sacred chank or shankha Turbinella pyrum; "Triton's trumpet" Charonia tritonis; and the queen conch (Aliger gigas) have been used as musical instruments around the world.
[10] Many species of mollusc, including gastropods such as whelks, bivalves such as scallops, cockles, mussels, and clams, and cephalopods such as octopuses and squids are collected or hunted for food.
[24] Among bivalve recipes, clams are made into soups called chowders,[25] or served as a sauce with pasta in dishes such as spaghetti alle vongole,[26] while mussels are widely eaten as moules marinieres, nowadays often with frites (chips).
[29] Tyrian or imperial purple, made from the ink glands of murex shells, "... fetched its weight in silver" in the fourth century BC, according to Theopompus.
[33] Procopius, writing on the Persian wars circa 550 CE, "stated that the five hereditary satraps (governors) of Armenia who received their insignia from the Roman Emperor were given chlamys (or cloaks) made from lana pinna.
[48] The effects of individual cone-shell toxins on victims' nervous systems are so precise as to be useful tools for research in neurology, and the small size of their molecules makes it easy to synthesize them.
[51] The flukes have a complex life cycle with freshwater snails as intermediate hosts; people swimming or washing in the water are at risk of infection.
[52] Molluscs can also carry angiostrongyliasis, a disease caused by the worms of the Angiostrongylus spp., which can occur after voluntarily or inadvertently consuming raw snails, slugs, other mollusks and even unwashed fruits and vegetables.
One such pest, the giant African snail Lissachatina fulica, has been introduced to many parts of Asia and islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, reaching the West Indies in the 1990s.
[54] The snail features in an animal epithet for its stereotypical slowness,[55] while its shell-less relative the slug similarly denotes a person who is lazy and loathsome.
[58][59][60] The Gorgon of Greek mythology may have been inspired by the octopus or squid, the severed head of Medusa representing the animal, the beak as the protruding tongue and fangs, and its tentacles as the snakes.
The Nordic legend of the Kraken may also have derived from sightings of large cephalopods; the science fiction writer Jules Verne told a tale of a Kraken-like monster in his 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
[68] In the Dutch Golden Age, still life painters such as Adriaen Coorte often depicted ornate sea shells of varied kinds in their compositions.
[69] In his 1758 Systema Naturae, and then in his 1771 Fundamenta Testaceologiae, the pioneering taxonomist Carl Linnaeus used a series of "disquieting[ly]"[70] sexual terms to describe the Venus shell: vulva, anus, nates (buttocks), pubis, mons veneris, labia, hymen.
