Olives In The Sand - Olivella biplicata

Anyone who spends much time scouring sandy beaches for seashells will eventually come upon the olive snail shell, genus Olivella. These snails burrow in the sand and creep along delow the surfact with their long tubular siphon sticking up to funnel in freash sea water. This species, the purple olive snail, Olivella biplicata, is a carnivore or scavenger, sometimes eating live sand worms, and at other times feeding on pieces of tissue that become burried in the shallow sand.

For a concise and revealing teaching video about nudibranchs in the Phylum Mollusca, get our video: Branches on the Tree of Life: Molluscs. The ecology and diversity of seashores is covered by our program, The Biology of Seashores.