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Giant Clam — printable fact sheet
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Giant Clam
Tridacna gigas
Tridacna gigas can exceed 1.2 m across and 200 kg, and it is not really living on the plankton it filters. Most of its food is made in-house: the enormous fleshy mantle that bulges out between the shell valves is a farm, packed with symbiotic algae that photosynthesise and hand …
Did you know?
- A single giant clam can produce millions of eggs in one spawning event.
- A giant clam's shell is so large and slow-growing that a single individual may be over a century old, laying down growth bands that record local conditions like tree rings. They are heavily overharvested — the adductor muscle is prized in parts of Asia and the shells are sold as ornaments — and populations have been wiped out on many reefs, prompting large-scale hatchery and restocking programmes. The clam has simple eyespots scattered across the mantle that detect a passing shadow and trigger a slow retraction. Because it depends on light, it can only live in clear, shallow water, which makes it an early casualty of sediment runoff.
What I learned
Draw the giant clam
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