Imagine, if you would, that a clam was a church. Most of the walls are thick and opaque, protecting the animal’s soft insides ...

Clams called Heart cockles, found in the warm, equatorial waters of the Indo-Pacific, have a mutually beneficial relationship ...

Since the first fiber optic cables rolled out in the 1970s, they’ve become a major part of everything from medical devices to ...

When it comes to technologies used only by humans, you might think that fiber optics would rank right up there. Such is ...

Heart cockles have windows in their shells made from natural optical fibers, allowing light through to the algae inside them.

More information: Dakota E. McCoy et al, Heart cockle shells transmit sunlight to photosymbiotic algae using bundled fiber optic cables and condensing lenses, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10 ...

These seemingly healthy creatures include a clam-like mollusc called a heart cockle — the name coming from the shape of its shell. "These strange little clams are a little bit tougher than ...

Unlike clams, the heart cockle doesn't need to open wide to bask in the sun. It has a clever trick up its shell: tiny, ...

A heart cockle shell has been found to let in light through a design that resembles fiber optic cables. This could inspire everything from helping... What a mollusc shell and fiber optic cables ...

Tiny, solid windows in the shells of heart cockles let in light for the photosynthetic algae inside them – and they could show us how to make better fibre-optic cables ...