Sea Snail - Human Uses

Human Uses

A number of species of sea snails are used by humans for food, including abalone, conch, limpets, whelks (such as the North American Busycon species and the North Atlantic Buccinum undatum) and periwinkles including Littorina littorea.

The shells of sea snails are often found by humans as one kind of seashell that washes up on beaches. Because the shells of many sea snails are attractive and durable, they have been used by humans to make necklaces and other jewelry from prehistoric times to the current day.

The shells of a few species of large sea snails within the Vetigastropoda have a thick layer of nacre and have been used as a source of mother of pearl. Historically, the button industry relied on these species for a number of years.

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