Abalone - Sea Snails

Facts about Abalone sea snails, "Scientific name for Abalone - sea snail Haliotis". An Abalone is a universal name for any of a collection of small to extremely large palatable sea snails. The Abalone are sea gastropod mollusks that belong to the genus Haliotis of the Haliotidae family. Other familiar names of this variety are sea ears, ear shells, and muttonshells or muttonfish in Australia, paua in New Zealand and ormer in Great Britain. The flesh of abalones is extensively measured to be an attractive food, and is consumed cooked or uncooked in a diversity of cultures. By weight, roughly one third of the Abalone is palatable flesh, one third is shell and one third is offal.

Features about Abalone - sea snails

The shell of an Abalone has a low open twisting structure, and is distinguished by numerous open respiratory holes in a line close to the outer edge of the shell. The thick internal layer of the shell is made up of nacre, which in numerous species it is extremely iridescent, offering rise to a collection of strong variable colors that make the shell, eye-catching to humans as ornamental objects, jewels, and as a basis of multicolored mother-of-pearl.

Abalones have a curved, rounded to oval-shape shell, and may be very bowed or extremely flattened. The shell of most species in their family is ear-shaped, presenting a tiny even spire and two or three whorls. The final whorl, recognized as the body whorl, is auriform, denoting that the shell looks like an ear, offering the reason to call this Abalone by the common name the ear shell.

Abalones have a layer cleft in their shell, which impresses a channel in the shell, in which there is the chain of holes that is the major feature of the genus. These outlets are respiratory openings for expelling water from their gills and for releasing eggs and sperm into the water line. They structure what is recognized as the seleniregion that will have a form as the shell develops. This chain of 8 to 38 holes is close to the anterior border. Only a few holes are normally open. The older holes are slowly closed while the shell develops and fresh holes will form. Each species of Abalones has a typical amount of open holes, ranging from four to ten, in the seleniregion. Abalones contain no operculum, and the opening of the shell is extremely broad and nacreous.

The outside of the shell of Abalones is dull and striated. The color of their shell is extremely variable between species, which may mirror the diet of the Abalone. Their iridescent nacre that lines the inside part of the shell differs in color, ranging from silver white, to red, pink and green-red to deep green, blue to purple.

Abalones use to show fimbriated head-lobes. Their side-lobes are fimbriated and cirrated, as well. They have an extremely large foot, which is rounded. The radula possesses small middle teeth, and their lateral teeth are solitary and it is similar to a beam. There are roughly 70 uncini, with denticulate clasps, among which the first four are extremely large. The flexible body of the animal is coiled about the columellar muscle, and its introduction, in place of being on the columella, is at the centre of the inside wall of the shell. The gills of Abalones are regular and both are well developed.

Diet of Abalone - sea snails

Abalones are herbivorous, and they feed on their rhipidoglossan radula on macroalgae, but they usually prefer to feed on brown or red algae.

Behavior of Abalone - sea snails

Abalones cling firmly with their wide, muscular foot to rock-strewn surfaces at sublittoral depths, even though some species used to be widespread in the intertidal region. Abalones attain maturity at a fairly small size. Their productiveness is high and enhances with their size, ranging from 10,000 to 11 million eggs at an instance. The spermatozoa of these snails are filiform and sharp at one end, and their anterior end is a rounded skull.

The average lifespan of Abalones ranges from 15 years to 30 years, according to their variety.