Lithoredo abatanica, a mollusk that was unearthed from the bottom of a river in the Philippines, has an unusual diet: it eats stones and poops out sand!
Lithoredo abatanica was introduced this week by an international group of scientists in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It is first classified as a shipworm, a group of burrowing animals related to clams, but at the same time, it’s so different from known examples of shipworms that it is both a new species and genus.
The cecum, a large organ used in digesting wood that is common across shipworms, was missing in the new species. The shipworms’ guts, however, were full of fragments of stone, which chemical analysis showed to be the same stone that the animals were living in. What came out was stone, too.
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Exactly what the shipworms are getting from the stone is not yet clear. One possibility, the researchers speculate, is that the granules could be helping them grind up plankton and other creatures floating in the water, much the way gizzard stones help birds break down food they’ve swallowed whole.
Image Credit: Marvin A. Altamia and Reuben Shipway
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woah i wonder what happens if you give it lemons
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