Everything_You_Need_To_Know_About_Mollusks

Everything You Need To Know About Mollusks Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mollusks Mollusks: soft, squishy, slimy, and in some cases tasty animals. Mollusks have a soft body that may be protected by a hard shell. Some mollusks have hard outer shells, such as snails, while others have a light internal shell (squids) or no shell at all (octopuses). There are three characteristics that all mollusks have in common. First of all, mollusks have a mantle. This is their soft outer tissue layer. The mantle, in some species is what produces the hard outer shell. Secondly, mollusks have a muscular foot, which they use to move or hang on. The muscular foot appears in different ways on different mollusks. Third, between the mantle and the foot, there is the visceral mass. Most of the internal organs are located here. There is one more characteristic that most, but not all mollusks share. This is an open circulatory system in which blood flows freely over body tissues and organs. Although not all mollusks have separate sexes, they all reproduce sexually. Reproduction can involve internal or external fertilization. Internal fertilization occurs when a male mollusk transfers sperm into the female mollusk. After the eggs mollusks, water, shell, internal, soft, shells, outer, mantle, hard, gastropods, foot, fertilization, feed, body, bivalves, very, two, system, squids, sperm, snails, scrape, same, radially, polyplacophora, over, organs, open, octopuses, occurs, muscular, mollusk, marine, fresh, filter, female