Lined+Chiton

The Lined Chiton lives in pools of the tidal zone along the whole Pacific Coast. it has one big foot for moving around and that is also where its mouth is. Like other mollusks a chiton uses its scraping tongue to get algae from rocks. Its shell is flexible because it is made up of smoothly joined plates that are hinged together. A chiton is like a pill bug when it is threatened it rolls into a ball to protect its soft ventral side. When our class went to a trip to the Beach we found a lined chiton and so we picked it up and held it in our hand for a while then after some time the chiton began to curl up into a little ball, us girls not really knowing what was going on figured that we should hurry up and put the chiton back in the water because we thought that it was dying from the lack of water! So we put the chiton back on a rock in the water and it unfolded and suctioned to the rock. It was after we had already put the chiton back in the water that we found out that the chiton was not dying...it was simply just protecting itself!

By: Tiffany