Growing up in Los Angeles in the early nineties, the mollusk had worried often about acid rain. Spawned in Taiwan, on an island choked with lush, photosynthetic matter, the mollusk had felt most at home among wet, squishy kin.

Are snails capable of saying, “I am putting my life on hold”? Do they ever differentiate between waking and resting, or wish that time passed differently?

Shells and skulls, both the calcified remains of some long-dead animal, straddle a boundary between nature and art—the coveted ideal for any artist.

Anelise Chen is the Daily’s newest correspondent. Her column will explore the scientific phylum Mollusca. This week, a clam has a crisis of identity.