March 7th, 2010 
A blog war is starting to develop again. No I am not talking about this one. I am talking about the Great Invertebrate Wars. Everything was quiet until someone had to stir the pot. GIW I took many causalities with molluscs taking the clear win. Which invertebrate group will take GIW II? If polls are accurate, and like Fox News I like to think they are, the winner is the Molluscs with 37%! The next closest group, Cnidaria with a measly 17%, is so far away we should close the polls early. What Cnidarians? A few stinging cells and some carbonate skeletons and everyone is throwing a freakin’ party. Big whoop! Arthropods with 14% don’t even have a fighting chance. How many times can you elaborate on the jointed exoskeleton? Give me a break! Well finally people are coming to their senses. Where are your precious echinoderms with a laughable 9% now Chris? What was that Bora? I can’t hear you over all the winning! Who else wants a piece?
So without further ado, the 10 reasons why Molluscs are the best.
- More body size range than any other group. The biggest invertebrate? A mollusc! And it has hooks!
- Way over 100,000 molluscs! [Insert your comment about how there are millions of arthropods here] Blah, blah, blah…they all look the same and that is some lame estimate based on beetles.
- Fear and respect the radula
- Snails with hair. We got them! Snails with iron. We got them! Snails with spikes that are just plain bad ass. We got them to!
- They will eat your wood, suck out your innards, and gnaw on your gills!
- Hermaphrodites, multiple partners, and sequential lovin’!
- Aplacophoras…I bet you didn’t even know about these? They are like crawling bristle brushes.
- Bernoulli referred to it as the miraculous spiral and others referred to it as the golden spiral for its relation to the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers. The logarithmic spiral possesses unique mathematical properties such that as the size of the spiral increases the shape remains unaltered. You can’t throw a Bernoulli or a Fibonacci without hitting one in the molluscs! Where else to they occur in metazoans? No where!
- Because of this, this, and this!
- Vampire squids from hell! HELL!
Make sure you stay tuned here for updates as the situation develops and the #invwar hashtag on Twitter
OK… Mollusks rock. Makes me sad I just posted cnidaria today.
Don’t forget the sea slug that is the only animal that can produce its own chloroplasts – Chlorotica FTW
Ah, OK, I hadn’t realize we were excluding tunicates because THEY’VE ALREADY WON.
So, for the second prize…I’m going to have to put my money on Echinoderms. Why, you ask?
Two words.
Urchin. Barren.
And if you need a blog post to backup the fact that, hell, they will cut you, man, see here.
And don’t even get me started on Pycnopodia.
MOLLUSCA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Clenched fist salute!
The little known stomatopod holds a high place in my book and deserves a vote. Best vision on the planet and arguably the most intelligent invert. They also pack a mean punch.
[...] Invert war has been declared. Personally, I consider myself a lover, not a fighter. And all the inverts are worthy of love in my book. But, knowing that tempers may flare as biologists across the blogosphere come to the defense of their preferred spineless taxa, I thought it would be worth injecting a bit of perspective into the fray. To give credit where evolutionary credit is due. I am talking about a group of animals that, though not poisonous, tentacled, gigantic, smart, sexy, cute, or disgusting, is, hands down, the most successful in the ocean. [...]
Molluscs now at 43%. Yeah, I’m gloating.
And in that great battle dome among mollusc groups, we know who eats the others for lunch. Don’t hate the sucker, hate the game.