Eli5: How do scallops have such beautiful, perfectly shaped shells? They’re basically just small globs of meat, right?

Question

Do they find the shells lying around and climb inside them? Do the shells form from sand around their glob bodies over the course of a hundred years?

In: Biology

Answer 1

In addition to what others have said, the scallops you get at a restaurant or whatnot are only a small portion of the actual scallop- specifically the muscle that opens and closes the shell. Whole scallops look like this: https://www.chowhound.com/post/recipe-entire-scallop-898901

Much more structure than just a “small globs of meat”!