Encyclopedia of Trivia

There are about 300 species of squid. The largest are the giant squid and colossal squid.

European squid By © Hans Hillewaert

Most squid are no more than 60 centimetres (24 in) long, although the giant squid may reach 13 metres (43 ft).

The colossal squid is the world's largest squid species in terms of mass and the largest invertebrate on Earth. Colossal squids weigh possibly as much as 750 kg (1,650 lb) and can grow to 12–14 m (39–46 ft) long.

The largest known specimen of colossal squid was captured on February 22, 2007 by a New Zealand fishing vessel off the coast of Antarctica. That individual weighed 495 kilograms (1,091 lb) and measured around 10 metres (33 ft). This specimen is the largest invertebrate ever found.

The largest known colossal squid ever captured. Wikipedia

The colossial squid has the largest eyes documented in the animal kingdom. They are the size of basketballs.

The Giant Squid has a doughnut shaped brain with their esophagus running through the hole in the center. If the squid eats something too big, it can result in severe brain damage.

Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs, and two longer tentacles with suckers.

All squid have a mouth with a radula, and jet propulsion with the siphon from the mantle. The radulla is a scraping organ in the mouth that scrapes nutrients from food sources.

Tentacles are used for locomotive power and capturing food sources.

Unlike the giant squid, whose arms and tentacles have only suckers lined with small teeth, the colossal squid's limbs are also equipped with sharp hooks: some swivelling, others three-pointed.


The squid's skin is covered in chromatophores, which enable the creature to change color to suit its surroundings, making it effectively camouflaged.

Scientists have created a fabric coating made of squid proteins that allows rips in cotton, linen and wool to "heal" themselves.

Squids do not live a very long life, mostly for only one or two years. This is why females release an enormous amounts (up to 11 pounds) of eggs to ensure the continuation of their species.

Despite their size, the giant squid and colossal squid are prey, as they are eaten by sperm whales and sleeper sharks.

Encounter between the sperm whale and giant squid. By Mike Goren from NY

All squids are carnivores; they eat other animals, not plants.

Japanese flying squid use jet propulsion to move around and can glide above the surface of the water for 30 meters.

Squid is a good food source for zinc and manganese, and high in copper, selenium, vitamin B12, and riboflavin.

Squid salad Pixiebay

In English-speaking countries, squid as food is often marketed using the Italian word calamari.

Squid ink is used to make pasta grey in color.

A snail is a common name for a gastropod mollusc with a coiled shell.

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Close relatives of the snails are the slugs, which are basically snails without shells.


The Burgundy snail was hailed for helping end the Jugurthine War (111-105BC) when a mercenary hunting snails found himself on a hill from which he could secretly survey a fort. General Gaius Marius then attacked and captured it, leading to a Roman victory.

The Romans ate common garden snails as snacks and were responsible for introducing the molluscs to Britain.

Ancient Roman Fulvius Herpinus fed his snails wine and meat before consuming them himself.

The trade in snails for eating boomed in medieval times when monks used them as replacement meat dishes during Lent.

Charles Darwin recorded in his Descent Of Man some evidence of intelligence, communication and homing instinct amongst the snail species.

A "dead" Egyptian snail was put on display in the British Museum in March 1846. The snail spent nearly four years glued to a specimen card before scientists realized it was still alive.


Snails are invertebrates, which are animals with no backbones. The shell on the snail helps protect it, and also reduces the loss of water by evaporation.

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A snail's "foot" is a muscle which allows it to move slowly across the ground.

The biggest snail is the African giant snail. Their foot is up to 35 cm long.

The largest recorded specimen of African giant snail was owned by Christopher Hudson of Hove, East Sussex, UK, and was collected in Sierra Leone in June 1976. It measured 39.3 centimetres (15.5 in) from snout to tail when fully extended, with a shell length of 27.3 cm (10.7 in) in December 1978.

Garden Snails have thousands of teeth, which are mounted on their tongue (radula). They are classed as Gastropods meaning, "walking stomach."

Snails’ teeth are the strongest natural material on Earth, able to withstand pressures high enough to turn carbon into diamond.

Snails have blue blood due to the lack of iron. They use copper instead to transport oxygen.

A snail can grow back a new eye if it loses one.

A snail’s venom can act as a pain-killer 1000 times more powerful than Morphine - And it’s not addictive.


Most land snails are herbivorous. They eat vegetables and fruits, such as lettuce, carrots, cucumber and apples. Aquatic snails are usually omnivores or predatory carnivores.

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Snails use only two brain cells to make "complex decisions". One cell tells the snail if it's hungry, the other tells the snail if food is around.

Land snails are nocturnal animals and move to food and partners in the late evening or at night. Water snails do not distinguish different daytimes.

A snail can sleep for three years. Desert snails sense when the air is particularly dry, and will burrow underground as a result. They can hibernate there for three to four years until the climate becomes more suitable for them.

Snails, which are hermaphrodites, mate by first stabbing each other with a tiny spike called a love dart, which determines who is more likely to be the 'male' in the exchange (the better stabber). Scaled to human size, the dart would be a 15-inch (38.1 cms) knife.

Some hermaphrodite snails do not need another snail to reproduce, but can make more snails all by themselves.

Each snail produces about thirty eggs and places them underneath a stone for them to hatch.


The snail's foot exudes slime, which eases its movement, leaving a trail.

Snails can crawl up walls and even upside down because of the slime produced by their bodies.

Giving Prozac to a snail renders it unable to stick to surfaces.

The fastest land snail is the Common garden snail (Helix aspera). It can reach speeds up to 0.047 kmh (0.029 mph).

On February 20, 1990, a garden snail named Verne completed a 31-cm (12.2-in) course at West Middle School in Plymouth, Michigan, USA, in a world record 2 min 13 sec at 0.233 cm/sec (0.09 in/sec).

A snail moving at its top speed of two inches a minute would finish a marathon in just over 18 months.

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It would take a snail nearly 4,575 years to circle the Earth.


Approximately one billion snails are served in restaurants annually.

The French eat 25,000 tons of snails a year, equivalent to 700 million individual snails. Roman - or Burgundy- snails are among the most popular.

French cooked snails

After the snails are cooked, the French make a dish called Escargot. They usually boil them in salt water, and add a garlic sauce.

There are nearly 200 snail farms in France but they still import 85 per cent of the snails they eat.

In 1928 a Mrs Donoghue was drinking a ginger beer in the Wellmeadow café in Paisley, Scotland. She found the decomposed remains of a snail in her drink. Mrs Donaghue took the company to court, and won the case, This laid the foundation of the modern law of negligence, establishing general principles of the duty of care.


There are more than 43,000 known species of snails all over the world.


The channeled basket snail can use its muscular foot to catapult itself through the air.

The slipper-shelled snail starts life as a male and gradually turns female as it grows up.

The cone snail, which looks like a cute little snail, is the most venomous animal on earth. Its venom is a mix of hundreds of toxins delivered through a harpoon-like tooth is capable of even piercing a wetsuit. There is no antivenom.

The geography cone

The Bermuda Land Snail was thought to have gone extinct in the 1970s. In 2014, many were rediscovered in a Hamilton city alleyway. The snails had colonized the alley early on and the surrounding city shielded them from the threats that wiped out the rest of the species.

Sources Daily Mail, Ezinarticles

Slug is a general term for a gastropod mollusc which has no shell, or just a small internal shell. The name "slug" is used for air-breathing land slugs, while the marine forms are usually known as sea slugs.

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Close relatives of the slug are snails, which are basically slugs with coiled shells.


Some land-living slugs can grow to quite a large size. Europe’s ashy-grey slug is 10 inches long. But that’s nothing compared to the sheer size of some sea slugs. Found in California, the black sea hare is a massive slug that can grow up to 3 feet in length and weigh over 30 pounds.

Black Sea Hare - San Pedro, CA - April, 2011 - K C Wikipedia

A slug has a pair of tentacles on its face for scent, and another two positioned on the top of its head for sight.

A slug can smell a mushroom two metres away.

A lot of slugs have shells—they’re just hidden within the slugs’ bodies.

Humans share 70 per cent of their DNA with slugs.

The animal with the most teeth is a slug. They have a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth, called a radula.

Slugs average approximately 27,000 teeth – that's more than a shark. One species of umbrella slug, Umbraculum, can have up to 750,000 teeth.

Slugs need so many teeth  because instead of chewing their food, they use their radula which sit on a tongue-like ribbon, like a circular saw — buzzing over vegetation and filing it to pulp as they go.

The slug moves by rhythmic waves of muscle contraction on the bottom of its foot. At the same time, it secretes a layer of mucus on which it travels, which helps prevent damage to the foot.

The record speed for a slug is 0.2 mph (0.32 kms per hour).


Most species of slugs feed on a broad spectrum of organic materials, including leaves from living plants, lichens and mushrooms. They play an important role in the ecosystem by eating decaying plant material and fungi.

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The slime that slugs produces as it travels is a liquid crystal—its molecules are more organized than a typical liquid but not as ordered as a solid.

Slugs dislike copper; their slime reacts with it and gives them an electric shock.

When attacked, slugs can contract their body, making themselves harder and more compact and more still and round. This, combined with the slippery slime they produce, makes slugs more difficult for predators to grasp.

Some sea slugs have body parts that snap off safely and easily, leaving a would-be predator with a smaller, less desirable meal.


Some slug species hibernate underground during the winter in places with cold winters, but in other species, the adults die in the autumn.


There is giant, hot pink slug, which is only found in a single, isolated forest on an extinct volcano in Australia.

Sources Mental Floss,  QI: The Third Book Of General Ignorance by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray

The word pearl derives from a Latin word for the thigh-bone, which had been given to a thigh-shaped mollusc.


Cleopatra once gave a lavish banquet for Mark Antony at Alexandra. The Roman expressed his surprise at the outlay involved. Cleopatra, to impress him further, took a pearl eardrop and dissolved it in vinegar to prove she could consume a fortune in a single meal.

Queen Elizabeth I of England liked to wear pearls the size of beans as she liked to be thought of as the goddess of the moon. (The moon is shaped like a pearl).


After many unsuccessful attempts, July 11, 1893, is recorded as the date on which Kokichi Mikimoto created the first cultured pearl. Mikimoto created it on the Japanese island of Ojima, which became a centre for pearl production and had its name changed to Mikimoto Pearl Island.

Nikola Tesla could not stand the sight of pearls, to the extent that he refused to speak to women wearing them.

The Pearl of of Lao Tzu weighing 14lb, was discovered in the Philippines on May 7, 1934 and is about the size of a basketball. For many decades it was the world’s largest pearl. Its most recent valuation is $75 million (£51 million).

A Philippines fisherman found the world's largest pearl in a giant clam and kept it under his bed for ten years. It was revealed in August 2016 when his wooden shack burned down. The pearl is 30 cm wide (1 ft) and 67 cm long (2.2 ft) and weighs 75lb (34kg). It is valued at $117 million (£80million).


Pearls come in eight shapes: round, semi-round, button, drop, pear, oval, baroque and circled.

By MASAYUKI KATO - Wikipedia Commons

Natural pearls form from a substance called nacre, the substance that lines the inner sides of an oyster's shell. It is produced by a mollusc in response to damage or injury.

Pearls are made mainly of calcium carbonate.

Pearls cannot be found in edible oysters. Pearl producing oysters come from the genus Pinctada; edible ones are of the Ostreidae family.

A pearl being extracted from an akoya pearl oyster.

Only about one in 10,000 wild oysters contains a pearl. Of those, only a small percentage achieve the size, shape and color desirable to the jewellery industry.

Natural pearls form from a substance called nacre, which is produced by a mollusc in response to damage or injury.

Cultured pearls are formed by inserting small beads and a piece of donor mantle tissue into the reproductive organ of a oyster, thus tricking the mollusc into producing nacre.

The development of cultured pearls ruined the economy of Kuwait for a time. The Middle Eastern country was heavily dependent on pearl fishing before oil was discovered there.

Real pearl necklaces and bracelets have knots tired between them to keep them from damaging each other. Most fakes do not.

Source Daily Express

Worldwide, around two billion pounds of oysters are eaten every year.


Stone Age man preferred oysters roasted to raw.

The Whaleback Shell Midden located on the east side of the Damariscotta River in Maine, United States contains the shells from oyster harvested for food dating from 2200-1000 years ago.

Oysters were farmed as long ago as 1381 in Northumberland, the north-east of England. It seems that the shrewd monks of Lindisfarne Priory bought a boatload of Oysters off an equally shrewd Scotsman for 100 shillings, and set up Oyster beds.

Casanova, the infamous 18th century Italian lover, believed in starting the day by eating 50 oysters.


In Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, one character complains that “poverty and oysters always seem to go together.”

Oysters were served to the public in America for the first time in 1763 when a primitive saloon opened in New York City in a basement in Broad Street.

By the 1880s Oysters were plentiful and cheap in North America. Over 150 million lbs of oyster a year were harvested and oystering supported large numbers of families. On the North Eastern coast seaboard, the wealthy flocked to eat in oyster houses. Other classes ate them up to three times a day at home or in oyster bars, oysters cellars, oyster houses, oyster parlours, oyster saloons, and oyster stalls. They were baked, fried, frittered, pickled, roasted, scalloped, stewed, skewed with bits of bacon, and used in puddings and soups.

As a teenager the author Jack London "worked" as a self-styled oyster-pirate, stealing oysters from oyster farms in San Francisco Bay and selling them at a marketplace in Oakland.

Oysters used to grow in huge oyster beds, but were "overfished" in the 19th century. Nowadays they are more expensive, so eaten less often.



The largest oyster-producing body of water in the United States is Chesapeake Bay,

The world record for opening oysters is 38 in a minute, set by Canadian Patrick McMurray in 2010.


The world record for eating oysters is 47 dozen in eight minutes set by American Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas  in 2012.

The old wives tale about only eating oysters in months with the letter R in them stems from the fact that they spawn in the summer months and taste better when taken from cold water.

Sources Daily Express, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs with rough, thick shells.



The saying "the world's your oyster" comes from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor when Pistol says: "The world's mine oyster. Which I with sword will open."

In 1808 a UK law was passed making theft of oysters punishable by transportation or prison.

The verb 'to shuck', meaning to remove the shell from an oyster, was first recorded in 1881.

The Oyster card is a form of electronic ticketing used on public transport in Greater London. It was launched in June 2003 and its name was meant to signify security, the link with the River Thames and recall the phrase, “The world is your oyster”.


A group of oysters is commonly called a bed or oyster reef. An oyster reef can increase the surface area of a flat bottom 50-fold.

Oyster reef at about mid-tide off fishing pier at Hunting Island State Park, South Carolina

A baby oyster is called a spat.

An oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day.

Oysters are "alternating hermaphrodites", which means they can switch sexes from time to time. They change sex up to four times a year.

Only about one in 10,000 oysters contains a pearl.

Removing a pearl from a pearl oyster. By Keith Pomakis -  Wikipedia

In 2005, research supported the view that oysters may have an aphrodisiac quality. Analysis showed that they contain rare amino acids that have been linked to reproductive success. Levels of these amino acids are highest in spring, when the oysters are breeding.

Oysters are good for the environment: they each filter between 30 and 50 gallons of water a day.

Source Daily Express

The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. There are about 300 octopod species, of which more than 100 are in the genus Octopus.

Octopods make up over one-third of the total number of living cephalopods. Other cephalopods include squid, and cuttlefish.

Common octopus By albert kok - ma photo, Wikipedia Commons

The standard pluralized form of "octopus" in the English language is "octopuses" although the Ancient Greek plural "octopodes" has also been used historically.


Octopuses are considered to be one of the most intelligent marine species. Their brain is the largest and most advanced of any invertebrate.

It is believed that an octopus's memory and learning capability can be compared in complexity to that of advanced vertebrates - Octopuses have been known to undo child proof tops on medicine bottles to get at food.

An octopus opening a container with a screw cap. By User:MatthiasKabel - Wikipedia

Octopuses are good mimics. Some imitate other dangerous animals like sea snakes and lionfish.


Octopuses have been seen eating their arms as a result of a neurplogical disease.

When an octopus' arm is severed, the arm will continue to search for food – Then it will try to feed the mouth it doesn't have.

They eat mostly crabs and some fish. Some species of octopuses eat other octopuses.

In his History Of Animals, Aristotle remarked that when the octopus comes into proximity with small fish, it might change its color to resemble surrounding stones and that it reacts in a similar way when alarmed.

The southern sand octopus shoot jets of water into the sand below it, creating a pit of quicksand to escape from predators.

Amphioctopus marginatus travels with shells it has collected for protection. By Nick Hobgood

All octopuses are venomous. To kill their prey they drill through the prey's shell and inject their venom into their body using their beak.

Although all octopuses are venomous, only the blue-ringed octopus is harmful to humans.

A female octopus can lay clutches of about 100,000 eggs, however, only a handful will survive to adulthood.

A female Giant Pacific Octopus quits eating and spends six months slowly dying as she tends to and protects her eggs.

The longest known brooding period for any species on the planet goes to the Graneledone boreopacifica, an octopus that guards its eggs for an astounding 4.5 years.

Octopuses have been observed acquiring shiny objects and stones and planting them around the sea bed like a garden. The song "Octopus’s Garden" by the Beatles was inspired by the captain of a boat informing Ringo Starr of this fact while on vacation in Sardinia.


A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

An Octopus consists of just a head and tentacles. Therefore his stomach, testicles etc are in his head.

The neurons in an octopus are not concentrated in the brain - two thirds of them are located in the tentacles meaning that each individual tentacle acts autonomously and independently of the brain. However, an octopus can exert precise control over a tentacle when need be through eyesight alone.

An octopus actually has six arms and two legs, not eight legs. They use their rearmost tentacles to push off from the surface of the sea bed before propelling themselves through the water with the other limbs.

Octopuses swim with their arms trailing behind. By albert kok - Wikipedia

Octopuses are the only animal that walk without any rhythm or pattern at all, just random movements that propel it forward.

An octopus is able to squeeze through a hole the size of a dime.


An octopus has three hearts. Two hearts are used to pump blood to each of the octopus' lungs and the third pumps blood throughout the body.

Octopus skin can change color 177 times an hour.


Heavyweight boxer Tony 'Two Ton' Galento was a colorful and controversial figure in boxing, and he was always up for a publicity stunt. In 1946, he accepted a bet to fight an octopus with boxing gloves on its tentacles. The fight took place at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey on August 5, 1946.

The octopus was a large, eight-armed creature that weighed over 100 pounds. It was placed in a tank of water, and Galento climbed in to fight it. The octopus fought back with its tentacles, but Galento was able to land some punches. In the end, neither fighter was able to knock the other out, and the fight was declared a draw.

Octopus wrestling, a sport which involved diving into shallow water and fighting an octopus back to the surface, was most popular on the West Coast of the United States during the 1960s. The 1963 record was a 57-pounder.


The annual World Octopus Wrestling Championships was held in Puget Sound, Washington. The event was televised and attracted up to 5,000 spectators in the 1960s.

According to Hawaiian mythology, the octopus is the only surviving member of a previous version of Earth.

In Japan you can get octopus flavored ice cream.

Source The Independent

The record for the longest-lived animal belongs to a ocean quahog - a type of deep-sea clam - that was 507-years-old when it died in 2006. Ming the Mollusc – named after the Chinese dynasty on the throne when its life began - was dredged alive from the bottom of the North Atlantic near Iceland in 2006 by researchers. They then put it in a freezer, as is normal practice, unaware of its age.  It was only when it was taken to a laboratory that scientists from Bangor University studied it and concluded it was hundreds of years old.  The discovery made it into the Guinness Book of World Records however by this time, sadly it was too late for Ming the Mollusc.

Left valve of the shell of /Ming, https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/3222/pdf

The Deep Sea Clam of the North Atlantic takes around 100 years to reach the length of just one third of an inch.

The world’s largest clams weigh almost 500 pounds.

The saying, "Happy as a Clam" is short for "Happy as a Clam at High Tide," since they have no predators that attack during high tide and can roam around freely.

Once a giant clam picks a spot to live on a reef, it does not move for the rest of its life.

Clams feed on plankton by drawing in water containing food using an incurrent siphon. The food is then filtered out of the water by the gills and swept toward the mouth on a layer of mucus. The water is then expelled from the animal by an ex-current siphon.

Clams are considered non-kosher along with all other shellfish.

The clam shell has three layers. The top one is called mother-of-pearl because it is a coating of pearl material.

Sea silk is an extremely fine, rare, and valuable fabric made from the long silky filaments which are secreted by a gland in the foot of a clam (Pinna nobilis) to anchor itself to the ocean floor. The material has been used since ancient times by Greek, Roman and Chinese cultures.

Clams do not have any of the five senses - smell, taste, sight, hearing, and feeling.