Our Earthly Teachers
Carrie Metzler | November 2021
I have always been fascinated by the extensive number of ways animals seem to live their lives. The way they find food, the way they eat, where they live, how they sleep, how they move around, how they communicate, how they fight, how they love… All these differences are extraordinary, and we still do not even know the vastness of this diversity. While I marvel at these livelihoods, I cannot help but envy them. When I was younger, I would dream about what it would be like to have fur or a tail or claws or gills. I would have done absolutely anything to get my legs to spring me into the air like frogs or to climb a tree the way a squirrel can and then run across branches and powerlines. I would argue with my parents about why I had to use silverware to eat when most life forms don’t use tools to eat. Honestly, being a human seemed almost boring. While I have now accepted that I probably won’t be able to leap like a frog down the sidewalk, I have realized that humanity has a lot to learn from animals’ behaviors and existences and that in many ways they are our teachers during our time on earth.
One of these teachers whom I have learned from recently is the species of limpet Patella Ferruginea, also known as the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet. These animals are aquatic snails, but their shells are more like a seashell than that of a land snail shell. These shells are a conical shape with broad rough vertical ribs around the shell all stemming from the top point. They are usually a mix of colors between a brown, orangey rust and a cream color. Under the shell is the squishy yellow and purple body of the snail that clings to the inner shell walls. These limpet’s shells can grow to be between 3 and 4 inches in diameter, making them one of the larger limpets to exist.
How can these limpets get this big? Well, they must eat of course! These marvelous, ribbed limpets live in cold water, rocky, intertidal zones, a rather niche habitat. On the rocks in these zones live a multitude of bacteria, spores of macroalgae, and microalgae which limpets are free to feast on. Under their shell, attached to their smooth and slimy bodies is a ribbon of small teeth the creature uses to scrape the life off the rocks for dinner.
One of the most fascinating aspects of our small beautifully shelled teachers is the incredible ability they have to change their sex throughout their lifetime. When limpets are born, they all start out their lives as males. As they mature, some of these creatures change their sex to female, some stay male. Even after some of these limpets have changed their sex, some of them then change their sex again!
So, these limpets are trans? Gender-fluid? Queer? Regardless of how human definitions would classify them, they are remarkable if you ask me. Western studies will have people believe that all of nature fits into the cis hetero-normative narrative. Well, the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet is here to prove them wrong and show us that nature is full of sexual and gender diversity. These creatures are breaking even the definitions of queerness as they don’t fall into a single category. In fact, a great deal of nature does not fall into human categories of sexuality and gender. The New Mexico Whiptail Lizard is a species with only females that can reproduce by mating with each other. The white throated sparrow has four gender, two female and two male. Many coral reef fish have been known to switch their sex in different social situations. Mushrooms have been found to have more than 25,000 different genders. And the list goes on!
Every time I learn about a new queer species, I get a rush of excitement and joy. Learning about the vast queerness that exists in nature is extremely validating, especially when naturality has been used as a justification for anti-queerness. I feel as though these queer animals, plants, and fungi are like a supportive crowd in the background of my life cheering me on through self-discovery. These species challenge me to think about the limits that humanity has placed upon its definitions of queerness. These animals often do not fall into the queer labels we have which is true for many humans as well. I often struggle to understand my own queerness and define it. Creatures like the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet remind me that it is okay not to be sure and that changing your identity is perfectly valid. Humanity is not bound by the constraints we have placed upon ourselves. In fact, we must let go of these definitions and limits we place upon ourselves for queerness and all forms of existence. We must do this if we want to create welcoming and just spaces and have genuine relationships with our beyond human kin.
The Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet has even more wisdom and knowledge to share with us about interspecies relationships. These limpets are considered a keystone species in intertidal zones because of the support they provide for these ecosystems. When these limpets feast on the bacteria and algae on rocks, they are creating spaces for barnacles to set up their camp on the rocks. These creatures in turn provide housing for other intertidal species. Eating away at the algae also prevents the overgrowth which could block the sunlight for sea floor species. Limpets also provide homes for smaller organisms on their shells as well. These ribbed limpets miraculously hold up their community and do so by just eating and existing!
Our queer teachers are in trouble, and so are their communities. The Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet is one of the most endangered species in the Mediterranean region. There are only about a thousand of its species left. These have been deemed a tasty food for both humans and other sea creatures. Catchers will pull these limpets right off the rocks and sell them as food and fishing bait. Sadly, these limpets are an easy target because their habitat is easily acsessible to humans and since they are rather large, they are easy to spot. These ribbed limpets are also facing lower rates of reproduction as water temperature increases due to climate change. These creatures prefer cold waters and tend to be smaller and weaker in warmer waters. These conditions put not only the limpets in danger of extinction but their ecosystems in danger of total collapse as well.
When we hear about the biodiversity crisis, most people think about the loss of the sheer number of species that exist on the planet right now. What comes with this however is the loss of behavioral diversity. We are losing our chance to learn about the diverse ways of eating, communicating, hunting, moving, tracking, storing, reproducing, relating, loving, etc. This diversity has taught humanity immensely, but now we must sit back down in the classroom and listen again, because it has much more to tell us about how we can support ourselves and our fellow nature before they are gone.
Sources
Alaimo, Stacy. “Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of ‘Queer’ Animals.” Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 51–72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzhnz.5.
Bosman, A. L., and P. A. R. Hockey. “Life-History Patterns of Populations of the Limpet Patella Granularis: The Dominant Roles of Food Supply and Mortality Rate.” Oecologia, vol. 75, no. 3, Springer, 1988, pp. 412–19
Guallart, Javier, et al. Two-Way Sex Change in the Endangered Limpet Patella Ferruginea (Mollusca, Gastropoda). Jan. 2013. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/07924259.2012.754794.
Henriques, Paulo, João Delgado and Ricardo Sousa. “Patellid Limpets: An Overview of the Biology and Conservation of Keystone Species of the Rocky Shores, Organismal and Molecular Malacology,” Sajal Ray, IntechOpen. 16 Aug 2017. DOI: 10.5772/67862.
Pollon, Christopher. “How Tiny Limpets Do the Heavy Lifting of Climate Resilience.” Hakai Magazine, 29 Nov. 2017, https://hakaimagazine.com/news/how-tiny-limpets-do-the-heavy-lifting-of-climate-resilience/.
Powell AWR. The patellid limpets of the world (Patellidae) (1st ed.). Delaware: Delaware Museum of Natural History; 1973. pp. 75-82.
Templado, Jose, and Javier Guallart. “The Patella Ferruginea Limpet: An Endangered Marine Invertebrate.” Lychnos: Notebooks of the Fundación General CSIC, Dec. 2010, https://www.fgcsic.es/lychnos/upload/publicacion.7.ficPDF_ingles.Lychnos3_ENG.pdf.
Carrie Metzler | November 2021
I have always been fascinated by the extensive number of ways animals seem to live their lives. The way they find food, the way they eat, where they live, how they sleep, how they move around, how they communicate, how they fight, how they love… All these differences are extraordinary, and we still do not even know the vastness of this diversity. While I marvel at these livelihoods, I cannot help but envy them. When I was younger, I would dream about what it would be like to have fur or a tail or claws or gills. I would have done absolutely anything to get my legs to spring me into the air like frogs or to climb a tree the way a squirrel can and then run across branches and powerlines. I would argue with my parents about why I had to use silverware to eat when most life forms don’t use tools to eat. Honestly, being a human seemed almost boring. While I have now accepted that I probably won’t be able to leap like a frog down the sidewalk, I have realized that humanity has a lot to learn from animals’ behaviors and existences and that in many ways they are our teachers during our time on earth.
One of these teachers whom I have learned from recently is the species of limpet Patella Ferruginea, also known as the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet. These animals are aquatic snails, but their shells are more like a seashell than that of a land snail shell. These shells are a conical shape with broad rough vertical ribs around the shell all stemming from the top point. They are usually a mix of colors between a brown, orangey rust and a cream color. Under the shell is the squishy yellow and purple body of the snail that clings to the inner shell walls. These limpet’s shells can grow to be between 3 and 4 inches in diameter, making them one of the larger limpets to exist.
How can these limpets get this big? Well, they must eat of course! These marvelous, ribbed limpets live in cold water, rocky, intertidal zones, a rather niche habitat. On the rocks in these zones live a multitude of bacteria, spores of macroalgae, and microalgae which limpets are free to feast on. Under their shell, attached to their smooth and slimy bodies is a ribbon of small teeth the creature uses to scrape the life off the rocks for dinner.
One of the most fascinating aspects of our small beautifully shelled teachers is the incredible ability they have to change their sex throughout their lifetime. When limpets are born, they all start out their lives as males. As they mature, some of these creatures change their sex to female, some stay male. Even after some of these limpets have changed their sex, some of them then change their sex again!
So, these limpets are trans? Gender-fluid? Queer? Regardless of how human definitions would classify them, they are remarkable if you ask me. Western studies will have people believe that all of nature fits into the cis hetero-normative narrative. Well, the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet is here to prove them wrong and show us that nature is full of sexual and gender diversity. These creatures are breaking even the definitions of queerness as they don’t fall into a single category. In fact, a great deal of nature does not fall into human categories of sexuality and gender. The New Mexico Whiptail Lizard is a species with only females that can reproduce by mating with each other. The white throated sparrow has four gender, two female and two male. Many coral reef fish have been known to switch their sex in different social situations. Mushrooms have been found to have more than 25,000 different genders. And the list goes on!
Every time I learn about a new queer species, I get a rush of excitement and joy. Learning about the vast queerness that exists in nature is extremely validating, especially when naturality has been used as a justification for anti-queerness. I feel as though these queer animals, plants, and fungi are like a supportive crowd in the background of my life cheering me on through self-discovery. These species challenge me to think about the limits that humanity has placed upon its definitions of queerness. These animals often do not fall into the queer labels we have which is true for many humans as well. I often struggle to understand my own queerness and define it. Creatures like the Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet remind me that it is okay not to be sure and that changing your identity is perfectly valid. Humanity is not bound by the constraints we have placed upon ourselves. In fact, we must let go of these definitions and limits we place upon ourselves for queerness and all forms of existence. We must do this if we want to create welcoming and just spaces and have genuine relationships with our beyond human kin.
The Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet has even more wisdom and knowledge to share with us about interspecies relationships. These limpets are considered a keystone species in intertidal zones because of the support they provide for these ecosystems. When these limpets feast on the bacteria and algae on rocks, they are creating spaces for barnacles to set up their camp on the rocks. These creatures in turn provide housing for other intertidal species. Eating away at the algae also prevents the overgrowth which could block the sunlight for sea floor species. Limpets also provide homes for smaller organisms on their shells as well. These ribbed limpets miraculously hold up their community and do so by just eating and existing!
Our queer teachers are in trouble, and so are their communities. The Ribbed Mediterranean Limpet is one of the most endangered species in the Mediterranean region. There are only about a thousand of its species left. These have been deemed a tasty food for both humans and other sea creatures. Catchers will pull these limpets right off the rocks and sell them as food and fishing bait. Sadly, these limpets are an easy target because their habitat is easily acsessible to humans and since they are rather large, they are easy to spot. These ribbed limpets are also facing lower rates of reproduction as water temperature increases due to climate change. These creatures prefer cold waters and tend to be smaller and weaker in warmer waters. These conditions put not only the limpets in danger of extinction but their ecosystems in danger of total collapse as well.
When we hear about the biodiversity crisis, most people think about the loss of the sheer number of species that exist on the planet right now. What comes with this however is the loss of behavioral diversity. We are losing our chance to learn about the diverse ways of eating, communicating, hunting, moving, tracking, storing, reproducing, relating, loving, etc. This diversity has taught humanity immensely, but now we must sit back down in the classroom and listen again, because it has much more to tell us about how we can support ourselves and our fellow nature before they are gone.
Sources
Alaimo, Stacy. “Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of ‘Queer’ Animals.” Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 51–72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzhnz.5.
Bosman, A. L., and P. A. R. Hockey. “Life-History Patterns of Populations of the Limpet Patella Granularis: The Dominant Roles of Food Supply and Mortality Rate.” Oecologia, vol. 75, no. 3, Springer, 1988, pp. 412–19
Guallart, Javier, et al. Two-Way Sex Change in the Endangered Limpet Patella Ferruginea (Mollusca, Gastropoda). Jan. 2013. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/07924259.2012.754794.
Henriques, Paulo, João Delgado and Ricardo Sousa. “Patellid Limpets: An Overview of the Biology and Conservation of Keystone Species of the Rocky Shores, Organismal and Molecular Malacology,” Sajal Ray, IntechOpen. 16 Aug 2017. DOI: 10.5772/67862.
Pollon, Christopher. “How Tiny Limpets Do the Heavy Lifting of Climate Resilience.” Hakai Magazine, 29 Nov. 2017, https://hakaimagazine.com/news/how-tiny-limpets-do-the-heavy-lifting-of-climate-resilience/.
Powell AWR. The patellid limpets of the world (Patellidae) (1st ed.). Delaware: Delaware Museum of Natural History; 1973. pp. 75-82.
Templado, Jose, and Javier Guallart. “The Patella Ferruginea Limpet: An Endangered Marine Invertebrate.” Lychnos: Notebooks of the Fundación General CSIC, Dec. 2010, https://www.fgcsic.es/lychnos/upload/publicacion.7.ficPDF_ingles.Lychnos3_ENG.pdf.