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What is this creature doing?

Answer:

This is a live Cockle that we found on the beach in Ft. Myers after a storm. If it just laid there on the sand, it would dry out, a predator would eat it, or some shell collector would come along and collect it.

To prevent all of those, it is in the process of digging itself into the wet sand. That red, mottled thing is its foot, which it is wiggling down into the sand. Once the foot is a couple of inches down, the Cockle expands the end, to form an anchor. Then it pulls with its foot, pulling the shell down a little, into the sand. It repeats that, over and over, until the shell is completely buried. When the tide comes back in, it will dig to the surface, and let the waves carry it back out to sea.

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