Room on the Bookshelf
(Excuse the metaphor – there’s never actually room on my bookshelf but bear with me)
I was breezing through Twitter recently as one does, looking for something odd or interesting or funny but mainly something that will signal that it’s time to get off Twitter, when I came across this Tweet that absolutely propelled me onto a rocky beach in, I believe, Cornwall.
It’s raining. It’s always raining in Cornwall. It’s cold, too, so that the rain stings a bit when it lands, but I am paying no attention. I’m maybe six or seven, and what I’ve noticed — really, the only thing in the world that I care about right now — is that in amongst the rocks on this beach, there are also *shells*. Absolutely thousands of smooth, gleaming shells. I don’t know it, but these are the shells of the cowrie snail. They look lickable, these shells, they look like candy, and on the backside of each shell, there’s a face almost, a little grinning mouth with thin, spindly teeth. I try inserting my finger into the slot, but only my fingernail fits.
Source: Tim Allen, iStock.
What really gets to me, what keeps me racing from one side of the beach to the other, from the waves to the cliff and back again, is that *every shell is different.* It’s maybe the first time I’ve noticed this, and it’s so beautiful an idea, I’m overcome with a need to look at every shell. My Dad struggles to keep an umbrella over me but it’s impossible, I’m running everywhere, I can’t get enough of the shells, I’m overwhelmed.
By this time in my life, back in America, I have a dog. And now we’re staying in England for a while for my parents’ work and I’m missing my dog and I think we’re staying in a house with a cat, and probably I’ve noticed that there are different dogs that don’t look the same as my dog at home, and different cats that don’t look the same as the cat I’m living with. But it doesn’t hit me till I’m on that rainy beach in Cornwall what it means to live in a world where there are multiple species, all slightly different, in one family. The idea nearly knocks me flat.
Cowrie snail. Source: plovets, iStock.
Lots of other people have also noticed and then they ended up studying diversity in cowry snails. I just took a look at this paper, which basically says that when cowry populations are diverse, cowry snails are small; when they’re less diverse, there’s the opportunity for one species of snail to grow gigantic.
Personally, I love this thought: that as the family of animals diversifies, the individual species grow smaller, to make room for each other’s niches. I imagine each snail species like a book on a bookshelf — maybe there’s a bunch of novels, some very thin poetry books, and a few big art history books taking up their entire end of the shelf (the giants who don’t have much cowrie diversity in their environment). There’s a space for all the patterns, all the funny little faces.
Source: Mr.LonelyWalker, iStock
So often, we talk about diversity in utilitarian ways — it’s so important to the health of the planet — but for me, for a moment, it was nice to step back and revisit my love for the planet purely on its own terms. All those fascinating creatures, all their ways of being. Diversity creates a pressure that in turn creates room for diversity — no one species grows too large, and all have a niche.
It suggests, doesn’t it, that there might be room for us, somehow — all our funny faces, all our ways of being.
Let me know in the comments if you remember an early encounter with nature that stuck with you — or, of course, if you have anything else nature-related you might like to chat about.
Wishing you a wander-ful week,
Hannah