All are Minnesota mussels. Butterfly, elephant-ear, monkeyface, elktoe, deertoe, and fawnsfoot live here too. As their names suggest, mussels can be eye-catching, yet they remain unfamiliar to most people because they spend their lives partially buried in river and lake bottoms, where they can be mistaken for rocks. Freshwater mussels live on every continent except Antarctica. These animals provide food for fish and wildlife, they clean water by filtering out particles to eat, and they show a river's health by reacting to pollution and other changes in the water.
Freshwater mussels belong to the world's second largest group of animals, called mollusks.
Minnesota mollusks also include snails, slugs, and clams. Inside the valves, a sheet of tissue called the mantle surrounds the body. A mussel has a single large foot and no head or eyes. Minnesotans often mistakenly use the term clam when referring to a freshwater mussel. Freshwater mussels and clams are both bivalve mollusks, but they differ in important ways.