I remember, as a kid, scouring beaches for their pink shells actually, I still do , prizing them above all others. Worldwide, cowries seem to have a similar effect on humans, being regarded as symbols of luck and fertility.
They have even been used as currency in some countries, including India, China and Ghana. Tropical cowrie shells are hard and smooth with a high gloss, often with beautiful patterns and colours. This makes them highly prized as jewellery and for use in ceremonies, as well as by shell collectors; some species have become rare through over-collecting of live specimens. Our British cowries Triviidae are in a separate family from tropical ones Cypraeidae , but they share the same shell shape and slit-like opening beneath.
Living cowries wrap a skirt of tissue, known as the mantle, around the shell. This continually deposits new enamel on the outside, and explains why cowrie shells are so beautifully glossy. Most other molluscs deposit new shell on the inside, so the inside stays shiny while the outside becomes worn. Young cowries actually start with a spiral shell, like other snails, but in adult animals the last whorl completely overtakes the original spire.
Space is made for the growing animal by dissolving the older shell internally. At the front end, the mantle rolls up into a long siphon, which takes in water for respiration, while two tentacles, with tiny eyes at the base, sense the water for chemical clues to dinner. Both our little cowries eat colonial sea squirts. Female cowries lay their eggs, to a capsule, inside a hole they have eaten into a sea squirt colony.
After a few weeks, tiny larvae emerge into the water, spending several months in the plankton before settling on the sea bed. It takes its name not from the coin, but from the Dutchman Jan de Groot, who built a house there in the 15th century. Eighty of the tiny shells were required to make a necklace, and between and necklaces could be sold during the tourist season at four shillings and sixpence each; a substantial sum in Victorian and Edwardian times.
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Description A hollow lost wax casting in gold of a bead in the form of a cowrie shell sedee. The opening of the shell is indicated by a row of small incised lines and there are two circular holes at either end to the domed shell for suspension.
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