- Clams are great for steaming or just shucking and eating raw
- Clams are highly valued as food
- Clams are invertebrates, with shells divided into two pieces called
valves. These pieces are joined with a hinge joint, and with two adductor
muscles that open and close the shells. Clams have a heart, blood vessels,
and kidneys.
- An exception to the oval shape is the razor clam, which has an elongate
shell suggesting a straight razor.
- Some quahogs on the Eastern American Coast may be 200 years old.
- In culinary use, clam most often refers to the hard clam (Taxonomically,
Mercenaria mercenaria) but may refer to other species such as the soft-shell
clam Mya arenaria.
- The giant clam gets only one chance to find a nice home. Once it fastens
itself to a spot on a reef, there it sits for the rest of its life.
- These bottom-dwelling behemoths are the largest mollusks on Earth,
capable of reaching 4 feet (1.2 meters) in length and weighing more
than 500 pounds (227 kg). They live in the warm waters of the South
Pacific and Indian oceans.
- Giant clams achieve their enormous proportions by consuming the sugars
and proteins produced by the billions of algae that live in their tissues.
- In exchange, they offer the algae a safe home and regular access
to sunlight for photosynthesis, basking by day below the water's surface
with their fluted shells open and their multi-colored mantles exposed.
- They also use a siphon to draw in water to filter and consume passing
plankton.
- Giant clams have a wildly undeserved reputation as man-eaters, with
South Pacific legends describing clams that lie in wait to trap unsuspecting
swimmers or swallow them whole.
- The adductor muscle of the giant clam is actually considered a delicacy,
and overharvesting of the species for food, shells, and the aquarium
trade have landed it on at least one group's "vulnerable"
list.
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