All About Lightning Whelks! What do lightning whelks eat? How big do lightning whelks get?

since I find so many lightning whelks down here I thought I'd put a video together to tell you all about these fascinating critters while we're waiting for the beaches to open again welcome to another swf beach life video if you're new to my channel please hit that subscribe button in the bell so you'll be notified when I post a new video so today we're gonna learn about these extraordinary creatures the Lightning whelk but first let's quickly review a bivalve and a gastropod a gastropod is a mollusk such as a snail or a slug or a whelk it only has one piece to its shell a bivalve is a mollusk that has a compressed body enclosed within a hinged shell such as oysters clams mussels and scallops in other words the critter is enclosed by two halves of its shell by valve by two the black part of the critter is the foot and that oval-shaped piece that will cover the snails body that's called the operculum the lightning whelk is a gastropod mollusk and almost always left-handed also known as a central shell a central shell means this shell is coiled in an anti-clockwise direction so when viewed from the front the opening or the aperture appears on the left the concept of a sinister shell has fascinated countless shell collectors over the years just as the majority of humans are right-handed gastropod molluscs follow a similar trend and the left-handed shell is somewhat of an oddity the largest central mosque is you guessed it the lightening Welk lightning won't begin as hatchlings they come from an egg casing that looks like this there are tiny thinner pieces in each of those layers of the egg casing and the little ones will manage to slither out of those little holes the walks that hatch will feed on the eggs that did not hatch that can be considered either quite convenient or quite gross I'll go ahead and let you be the judge the little snails will continue to grow and their shells will grow with them I've read quite a few differing statistics on how big these guys get but they seem to max out somewhere around fifteen to sixteen inches long here's an example of one that's almost that big this was the biggest one we found so far my husband needed two hands to safely handle this guy I could not get a reliable number on how old these guys get on one site it says ten to twenty years to reach about eight inches so it's a bit of a mystery how long these critters can actually live Lightning walks are predatory and they eat bivalves remember a bivalve is a critter that has two shells the larger whelk will insert the edge of its shell inside the bivalve and use it like a crowbar if it cannot pry the bivalves shell open this way it will grind the shell with its own shell until it creates a hole large enough to insert its radula or it's toothed tongue we had found this guy with a hole in its shell I wonder if another lightning well did this anyway the Lightning well can smell its prey with special sensory organs inside its body and will almost completely bury itself searching for other food we happen to find this lightning while eating a Sun ravenous clam Native Americans harvested whelks for food religious ceremonies and practical tools many tribes believe that the left-handed spiral made the shell sacred but whelks were also eaten and their shells used as scrapers gouges and even cups and bowls there's a house on Fort Myers Beach called the mound house that's a whole nother video I have to bring to you but if you'd like to see how shells were used by the Colusa indians make sure you stop over and check it out I don't want to spoil the best part but they have an underground exhibit where you can see layer upon layer upon layer of shelves this picture does it no justice you should go check it out for yourself very cool in 1987 the 70th Texas Legislature designated the lightening Wilkes shell as the official Texas state show it's kind of cool well I think Wilkes can be found all along the Gulf states this is me down here I find a whole bunch of them seeing as it is the Texas State shell I'm assuming you can find quite a bit over here as well and my understanding is that you can find them up in the Carolinas as well so if you're in that area and you've ever found one let me know so now when I show you a lightening well cough found you'll know a whole lot more about them thank you as always for watching don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss your weekly dose of beachy goodness