See:
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| Limpet eating algae in the aquarium. |
Seriously, though, if you look closely, you can see the scraping "teeth" on the radula. Here's the photo, cropped and saturated:
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| The radula is like a conveyor belt with sharp cutting blades. |
Limpets use a radula to scrape algae from rocks. The radula consists of evenly spaced horizontal rows of cusps or teeth on a supporting ribbon, each row comprising 2-6 cusps. Rows in some species number up to 200 or more.From Limpets and Relatives, by Tom Carefoot, UBC.
Much like a tongue, the radula rolls outward, then is brought back with its load of algae, which then passes into the esophagus.
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| Cross-section of a limpet mouth. (Limpets and Relatives) |
Sometimes, when the light is right, I can see tiny trails on the inside of the glass wall of the aquarium; limpet trails, where they've cleaned off the algae. They remind me of the snail trails in the algae on my old fence.
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| Snails are bigger, and hungrier; their trails are easy to see. |
I've wondered how a limpet moves from one piece of glass to another with a flattened shell. Or maybe they dont? Post a photo of that if you ever see that happen!
ReplyDeleteTim, they do, and I've watched them. I never thought to take a photo. I'll do that next time.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty cool. I remember learning about the radula in a marine biology class, but seeing it in this detail is great!
ReplyDelete