Why Mollusk Shell Designs Are Genius 

Despite all of our engineering technology, sometimes you just got to hand it to nature to develop the best structural designs.

In a new study published by the journal Science Advances, researchers found that some mollusks have evolved shells specially designed to handle extreme pressures found at the bottom of the sea.

To reach their conclusion, study researchers developed computer models and printed 3-D variants of two kinds of shells to run stress tests next to real shells gathered from beaches in India. The shells were from either from bivalves with a hinged exoskeleton or terebridae that live in screw-shaped shells.

The study team reported the shells both protect the squishy creatures inside them and redirect pressure away from where the creatures are least likely to be located within them.

“Nature keeps on making things that look beautiful, but we don’t really pay attention to why the shapes are what they are,” said study author Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, a materials scientist currently at Rice University, in a press release.

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