{"id":16726,"date":"2013-09-24T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T19:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/?p=16726"},"modified":"2020-02-09T19:11:33","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T00:11:33","slug":"difference-between-lightning-pear-knobbed-channeled-whelks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/24\/difference-between-lightning-pear-knobbed-channeled-whelks\/","title":{"rendered":"Difference Between Lightning, Pear, Knobbed, Channeled Whelks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"4<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I am obsessed with shells. I love to hunt for shells, collect different species of shells, travel for shells, learn about shells and research shells. So I have been like a pit bull with a bone ever since Shellabaloo 3<\/strong> <\/a>when an unusual shell showed up at our Shell ‘N Tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"knobbed<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Was is really a right-handed LIGHTNING WHELK? Or was it a KNOBBED WHELK (Busycon carica) just displaced????? LIGHTNING WHELKS are the only left handed shell in Florida so to find a right-handed would be so cool. I am so excitable when I see a “local” shell (Southwest Florida) I haven’t seen before so my mind starts racing. After I wrote the post Seashells And Beach Bling at Shellabaloo 3 Shell ‘N Tell<\/strong><\/a>, I just had to look into it further about that WHELK Gregg found. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. Somehting else looked a little different about that whelk other than just the opening…. was it really from this area? Hmmmm.  Then I got an email from another Shellabalooer, Marie, who said after she was sorting through her shells when she got home, she realized she found one of those right-handed whelks too. What??? What are the odds???<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"marie<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

OMG. It was sitting on her tray at the Shell ‘N Tell and I didn’t even see it! Here’s the photo I put on the blog post. Can you see it now? LOL<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"marie<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So I started racing through my shell collection of LIGHTNING WHELKS. Have I found a RIGHT-HANDED LIGHTNING WHELK before and just didn’t realize it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"lightning<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Well, No. I didn’t find one in our collection. Dang it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve heard “one in 10,000 LIGHTNING WHELKS are right-handed” … or something like that. Sorry if I got that number wrong but all I know is that it was a very rare find. \u00a0 So then…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was visiting my mom and family in Virginia Beach earlier this month, I helped my mom organize some her shells <\/strong><\/a>from her closet she had stacked up in shoe boxes.  Aha! This looks like Gregg’s right-handed shell. These were a few shells that were collected years ago from the Outer Banks of North Carolina (or they could have been found after a Nor-Easter on Virginia Beach- we cant recall) that looked just like his shell. They are KNOBBED WHELKS !!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"knobbed<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now that I had one in my hand, I knew that this was the same shell that Gregg and Marie found here on our beaches of Sanibel and Captiva. So they didn’t find rare right handed LIGHTNING WHELKS after all, they found KNOBBED WHELKS like these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"east<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After getting back home (with a few of my mom’s shells- heehee), I lined up all of the WHELKS. Now you can see the differences of all of the WHELKS too. Unfortunately, I don’t have a right-handed LIGHTNING WHELK to put in the line-up but you can see the rest of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From left to right- LIGHTNING WHELK (Sanibel), PEAR WHELK (Sanibel), KNOBBED WHELK (Outer Banks, North Carolina – OBX), CHANNELED WHELK (OBX).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"4<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"differences<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

You can see by the shape of the spire, and the “tail” the differences are from the LIGHTNING WHELK (left) and  KNOBBED WHELK (right)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"compare<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This view gives you lots of differences…especially since the LIGHTNING’s aperture opens on the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"difference<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Since the CHANNELED WHELK (left) and PEAR WHELK (right) look so similar, I thought I’d show the different views here as well…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"channeled<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Remember, we don’t have CHANNELED WHELKS (Busycon canaliculatum) here on the southwest coast of Florida either but we do have the PEAR WHELKS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"difference<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is what Dr Leal and I concluded from the mystery of these found KNOBBED WHELKS (not right handed lightning whelks) on Sanibel\/Captiva. People return shells to the sea- no matter where they found them. I have heard countless times (really, I hear this sooooo often!) that people will find a box of shells they collected from various places over the years but they want to get rid of them. They decide to take them back to the beach that is convenient. OR… they buy shells to scatter on the beach for a party, wedding or so their kids will have different shells to find. Then they leave them and the high tide takes them away and the end up washing back in like they were from the gulf. It happens. That’s why people find so many “foreign” shells here on Sanibel. So for our group to find TWO right handed lightning whelks in one week, errrrr….. even though we find the BEST beaches for our Shellabaloo shellers while they are here …. I think we found somebody’s old shells they collected from the Atlantic Ocean that they scattered on Sanibel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"whelk<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So know we know the differences between a LIGHTNING, PEAR, KNOBBED and CHANNELED WHELK!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"4<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Join us for the next Shellabaloo January 6-9, 2014<\/strong><\/a> or some of our other shelling adventures by<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CLICKING HERE<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"shelling<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am obsessed with shells. I love to hunt for shells, collect different species of shells, travel for shells, learn about shells and research shells. So I have been like a pit bull with a bone ever since Shellabaloo 3 when an unusual shell showed up at our Shell ‘N Tell. Was is really a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1811,1810,38,108,1805,2279,2007],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-channeled-whelk","category-knobbed-whelk","category-lightning-whelk-whelk","category-pear-whelk","category-right-handed-lightning-whelk","category-seashell-fun-facts","category-whelk","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/4-different-similar-whelks.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Nubb-4lM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29879,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions\/29879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iloveshelling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}