A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1140 entries
chiton
A chiton is a flattened oval mollusk that clamps to intertidal rock under an armor of eight overlapping plates set in a leathery girdle. The plates let it flex and grip an uneven surface, and a chiton knocked loose curls up like a pill bug. It grazes algae off stone with a tongue tipped in teeth capped with magnetite, one of the hardest materials any animal makes. Many species return to the same resting scar on the same rock after every feeding trip.
Etymology
The name is the Greek word for a tunic, the loose belted garment worn by men and women in the ancient world. Linnaeus applied it because the row of plates lies across the animal’s back the way the folded cloth of a tunic lies across a shoulder. The English word coat is not related, though it looks as if it should be; the Greek word came out of the Near East and is a relative of Hebrew kuttonet, the same garment.
Notes
The magnetite teeth are hard enough to leave grooves in granite, and a chiton grazing over decades measurably lowers the rock it lives on. Rows of chiton scars can be read on shoreline boulders at low tide. The plates wash up separately after the animal is gone and are called butterfly shells on some coasts.