Talk:Clam

A note

Do clam feet actually have little toes that are used in reproduction? This seems like a joke to me, but I'm not taking it out right away just in case there actually is a cite for it somewhere. 20:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)DaveOTN

Another note

I'm no expert, but apparently there is no scientific classification for the clam. Hence there should be no taxobox. Can anyone verify this? (Note that a taxobox has been added and removed twice previously) Jcsutton 12:50, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I was the one who put the taxobox. It said on the first line that it was the class Bivalvia. An I also found that it was phylum Mollusca on the Internet. So I assumed Animal Kingdom, but I checked for that.Sidious1701 00:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Just checked again, and Encarta says that there is a scientific classification for the clam. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553198/Clam.html . As stated above, I'm no expert. If you feel the internet search is enough to justify the info, then feel free to put the taxobox back in. Jcsutton 14:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Please read the article! Lots of different bivalves are called clams, but not all bivalves would be called clams, and the ones that are called clams are thoroughly polyphyletic. "Clam" is just one of those names that has been used too generally to be rigidly attached to any one taxonomic class. seglea 05:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

And another note

how long do clams live under water? email the answer to me at: juarez3408@yahoo.com

I don't know, and I don't think we should be saying that "science says they can live up to 200 years", unless someone can produce the reference - so I'm going to chop that bit out. seglea 05:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that the term "clam" refers to a general catagorization of animals in the Bivalvia class. THerefore this article should be like other articles for a class, or a redirect to Bivalvia. http://home.earthlink.net/~s_peters/ctaxonomy.html --BenWhitey 19:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

No - see above. It's just a general common name that needs to direct to a number of taxa. seglea 05:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Clam Juice Redirect

'Clam juice' page redirects to 'Clams' yet there is no mention of 'clam juice' on 'clam' page. Why do a redirect if you are not going to add the information. Seems to defeat the purpose. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.246.213.130 (talk) 20:44, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Photo

I've got a photo of a clam i'm planning to upload and use on one of the articles... Problem is that i'm unsure of it's name, see:

• http://www.pbase.com/wangi/image/42656078

Any ideas? Thanks/wangi 12:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

That's a scallop. The article does say that "clam" is an ambiguous term, and can sometimes cover scallops, but I think pictures should illustrate the most restrictive sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.31.239 (talk) 12:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

More info soon

I got some books on clams and should be able to update tomorrow. Keegan 23:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Reproduction

I couldn't find anything in wikipedia regarding reproduction. Interestinly enough, I found another complaint on the web that he couldn't either! Editors probably have some hierarchy in which reproduction is discussed at the peak of the pyramid or something. But I couldn't find it. I finally found info elsewhere suggesting that clams were fish (duh!). But that some maturing males become females! Otherwise like fish, I guess. Wikipedia is supposed to be written for the average person, not insiders. This will mean repeating the same common stuff over and over within species and subspecies, I suspect.Student7 03:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Anthro-Clam Crossbreeding?

Is there any history of a man or woman successfully crossbreeding with any genus of clam? I ask this because I am keenly interested in the possibility 74.69.123.20 (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

completely not possible, never happened and never will, atleast by what I've learned ^_^ --69.233.89.61 (talk) 03:10, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

What about...

...the THUNDERCLAM?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.29.136.102 (talk) 17:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging

This article talk page was automatically added with {{WikiProject Food and drink}} banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here . If you have concerns , please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 12:29, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Photo of topneck clam

I took this image of live topneck clams for sale at a California seafood market if someone thinks it would be good to include. If not, no worries.

live topneck clams for sale at a California seafood market

ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Currency?

Is it true some cultures used clam shells as a currency? It's an idea that I've seen a lot in fiction (admittedly, mostly of the sort you wouldn't expect to be historically accurate), and I don't know if it's based on anything. Maybe some writers just decided that cowry shells didn't look enough like coins. Daibhid C (talk) 23:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Some north american species of bivalves (colloquially called "hard clams" or "quahogs") were used to by the north american indians to manufacture a sort of shell money called wampum. See that article for more information. Historically, most shell money was made from gastropods rather than bivalves, so I'm not sure I would bother mentioning it in the article. Prophet121 17:09, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

More Info

Could someone add more information about the ANIMAL ITSELF instead of how it's useful to humans? That would totally improve the article. Things like locomotion, skeletal structure, and eating habits. I'd do it myself, but i don't have the knowledge of the animal or of editing articles. Thankya! ^_^ -Pooja --69.233.89.61 (talk) 03:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, as it says in the article, there isn't an animal itself, except to the extent that clams are all bivalves, and all the information on that is under Bivalvia. "Clams" are the bivalves that are useful to humans, and that seems to be what defines them. Daibhid C (talk) 23:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

OK. Thankya!--69.233.89.61 (talk) 03:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge Bivalvia into this?

There is currently a Bivalvia article, but isn't it the same as this? FunkMonk (talk) 19:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

No, and I'd disagree with the text that claims that "clam" can be applied broadly to any bivalve. In vernacular, culinary, and scientific usage, "clam" refers specifically to burrowing bivalves, and disincludes groups such as mussels, oysters, and scallops, and other clam-like extant and fossil groups like brachiopods. The article could use some attention regarding clam-specific biologic information... Westerncenter (talk)

a discovery

When I was at my cousin's home, we had clam for dinner. But the children ate first,(My 4 cousins and me)my cousin and I finished first! So we went in the kitchen to watch the uncooked clams.We saw that they were still alive, so my cousin Racheal(fake name to protect identity)touched one, it moved!Then I put one close to he metal bowl, and t spurted it's meat out! That is the discovery, it may seem normal to you, but to us, it is amazing!Because we're just kids! frm Wikiuser299. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiuser299 (talk • contribs) 13:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Australia

I haven't been able to find anything fresh in Australia sold as "clams", however, I have found "volvone" in Sydney, and in Tasmania they sell locally-harvested "pippies" and "periwinkles". I am trying to find out whether or not these count as a kind of "clam". Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. :) -- TyrS  chatties  04:41, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

If you could upload images of them we could work out what they are. Invertzoo (talk) 02:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I gather that Australia's edible clam variety is also known as a Pippi, which seems to be an adoption of the New Zealand Māori term Pipi. The typical little neck clam is called a Cockle here in New Zealand, despite having no botanical relationship to Cockles elsewhere. Martin Kealey (talk) 04:04, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[

Your problem is that you aren't looking in the right category of animal. See my comments below. You are a perfect example of the confusion that this article fosters— "clams" are not a class of animal. "Clams" are bivalves, and bivalves are a class of animal. KDS4444 (talk) 01:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Visual organs in clams

I don't have time to look into this thoroughly, but I noticed that this article mentions that clams have no eyes. However, a preliminary search turned up three articles that suggest that certain clams have simple types of eye:

Animals with Pinhole Visual Systems http://www.osa-opn.org/Content/ViewFile.aspx?id=11013

The spatial resolution of the pinhole eyes of giant clams (Tridacna maxima) http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1511/185.full.pdf

Charting Evolution’s Trajectory: Using Molluscan Eye Diversity to Understand Parallel and Convergent Evolution http://biology.fullerton.edu/people/faculty/doug-eernisse/pubs/Serb_Eernisse_08.pdf

Would anyone available please look into this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.107.200.69 (talk) 00:47, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You aren't asking the right question. Your problem is that you are trying to look at "clams", when that is not a useful category of mollusc. Lots of molluscs have eyes. Some bivalves have eyes. Some bivalves with eyes are referred to as "clams". Not many, though. All scallops have eyes. They are bivalves. They are not usually considered "clams." Hence the utter confusion. KDS4444 (talk) 01:30, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Redirecting to Bivalvia

I recently converted this into a redirect to Bivalvia. I suspect this may be undone soon, and would like to lay out some of my reasoning here. The opening sentence of this article is "Clam is the general common name of any mollusks within the class Bivalvia." If it is a common name for another class of animal, then why is it not included with the article on that animal and mentioned as a common name? We don't have separate articles for Canis canis and "dog", we have "dog." Beyond this, the content of the article duplicates (though only haphazardly) the content of Bivalvia— this means we have a second article that covers the same topic less well, which is unhelpful to readers. Next, the article makes reference to and covers topics which are specific to particular languages (Italian, Japenese, etc.) which do not even have the word "clam" in their vocabularies and which organize their sense of molluscs differently from the way that we do in English. And next, in the various articles on specific species of clam, the introductory sentence nearly always reads "...is a marine/ freshwater bivalve mollusc if the family XXXX-idae." While I appreciate that the term "clam" is used by some English speakers to indicate particular classes of animals (according to one source, it refers specifically and only to Mya arenaria and no other species, distinguishing it from the quahogs and the scallops and presumably from the hard shell clams), having an article whose content includes no useful information distinguishing "clams" from any other bivalve group is disorienting and impractical and does not further the intentions of the Project. From the talk page above it is evident that I am not the first editor to have questioned the utility of having a separate article on "clams"— I didn't intend to redirect this article until I read its content, and saw that it consisted of duplicate information unrelated to its use in English. If we want to have an article called "Clam" then we need to fill that article with information that is not simply duplicated in another article, and if that cannot be done (which, according to the content of the article when I last saw it, could not) then it seems to me that the articles aught to point to the same namespace. KDS4444 (talk) 01:17, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. I did look through both articles when I saw your move. Clearly Bivalvia is a much better article (FA), there is significant overlap with clam depending on your definition as you say. I think a merge was a reasonable move, but raises a question with regard to WP:COMMON NAME - if the consensus is that both articles should remained merged I would argue Clam should be the location for it as the commonly recognised name. I can imagine readers coming to read about clams and not immediately being clear why they are presented a page with a foreign Latin name - the majority according to PageViews. I might slightly rearrange the first sentence to better welcome viewers now. BW |→ Spaully ^~talk~  08:19, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Clam and Bivalvia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Following the discussion over changes to Bivalvia following the bold redirect there I feel we are at the revert + discuss stage to establish consensus. Please see discussion at Talk:Bivalvia#Proposed_merger_of_Clam_into_Bivalvia to establish consensus. BW |→ Spaully ^~talk~  10:42, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know whether all Bivalvia can be called Clams, but if it is so, then this sentence must be deleted: "Clams in the culinary sense do not live attached to a substrate (like oysters and mussels) and do not live near the bottom (like scallops)". Beside that this sentence contradicts the other one in the Italian section "... Cozza (Mytilus galloprovincialis) [...] Dattero di mare (Lithophaga lithophaga) ..." Cozza und Dattero are Mussels and live attached rsp. inside a substrate. 194.174.73.80 (talk) 11:23, 30 March 2017 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin

We already agreed in the discussion on the other page that not all Bivalves are clams, and mussels (Cozze) aren't either. The sentence does not imply that mussels are clams, by the way. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:44, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh yes, "varieties of clams in Italian cooking are [...], the Cozza (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and ... " does not imply that mussels are clams ... 194.174.73.80 (talk) 15:01, 31 August 2017 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin

You did have a valid point, but the sentence has long since been modified, and the community has long ago agreed not to merge the articles, which have very different scopes. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:18, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clam definition (Be a little more precise what you meant)

Is the definition of a clam a edible bivalve?

Are cockles, mussels oysters and scallops clams because they are edible— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gyrkin (talk • contribs)

• @Gyrkin: No, as the article states that is NOT the definition of clam. Your still not signing your posts.--Kevmin § 20:11, 12 October 2017 (UTC)