a sense of scale

this huge clam is called, in french, an ‘anodonte.” in english we call them duck mussels or swan mussels, for what i assume are obvious reasons. in french it should be called the wild boar mussel. it sits in stagnant freshwater, filtering the world around it, and every once in a while, a large, bristly, tusked quadruped shows up, roots around, drags the huge mussel to the shore, breaks it open, and eats raw shellfish for lunch. in my son joseph’s class, one of his teachers recently remarked that the wild boar is called an omnivore, which was really selling it short. it will eat more things than are included in the term omnivore. it should really be called a “toutovore.” an “everythingvore.”

anodonta

autignac, france

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