How Do Oysters Make Pearls?
Quick Questions gives you the low-down on how oysters turn a tiny bit of gunk into a lovely, valuable pearl. ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on...
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(intro music) Most of the shiny, bling-y things that we use for jewelry come from deep in the ground, mined from the earth's crust and polished into some of the world's most expensive rocks. But not your grandmother's pearls. As you probably know, those shiny things grew inside the highly calcified bivalve that we know as the oyster. So how did this happen? And why? Whether cultured by humans, or naturally formed in the wild, Pearl formation is the result of a simple irritant. Many species of bivalves, including mussels and clams, are capable of producing pearls when irritated, but only a few can form the shiny coating that makes them so attractive to humans. And oysters do it better than anyone else. In the wild, the irritant is just a sma...
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(intro music) Most of the shiny, bling-y things that we use for jewelry come from deep in the ground, mined from the earth's crust and polished into some of the world's most expensive rocks. But not your grandmother's pearls. As you probably know, those shiny things grew inside the highly calcified bivalve that we know as the oyster. So how did this happen? And why? Whether cultured by humans, or naturally formed in the wild, Pearl formation is the result of a simple irritant. Many species of bivalves, including mussels and clams, are capable of producing pearls when irritated, but only a few can form the shiny coating that makes them so attractive to humans. And oysters do it better than anyone else. In the wild, the irritant is just a sma...
