Common Limpet (Patella vulgata): habitat and range

Fun facts

Its radular teeth, reinforced with goethite fibres, are the strongest biological material in tension ever measured, ahead of spider silk.
It practises homing: it wears a scar into the rock that matches the rim of its shell exactly, and always returns to the same spot after feeding.
By grazing it stops algae from colonising the rock, which shapes the whole intertidal community.
It always returns to its spot. Each limpet has a home scar of its own, a depression it wears into the rock itself that fits the edge of its shell exactly; it goes out to graze at high tide and returns to that precise point by following its own mucus trail.
That perfect fit is what lets it seal the shell against the rock and avoid drying out through hours of low tide.
Its teeth are the strongest biological material known. A 2015 study measured a tensile strength of between 3 and 6.5 gigapascals in the teeth of its radula, higher than spider silk and comparable to the best carbon fibres. They are made of goethite nanofibres embedded in chitin.
With them it scrapes microscopic algae straight off the stone, wearing the rock away in the process: limpet grazing is a measurable agent of erosion on rocky coasts.
It changes sex: it matures as a male, and a proportion of individuals become female with age.
It can live twenty years on the same rock.

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Parks and dive sites where this species has been documented — showing 20 of 43.

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