page_title: Molluscs in culture
section_title: Symbolic interactions
hierarchical_section_title: Molluscs in culture / Symbolic interactions
caption_attribution_description: English: Octopus, detail from a Roman mosaic in the 'House of the Dancing Faun', Pompeii. Français&#160;: Poulpe, détail d'une mosaïque romaine. Italiano: Polpo, dettaglio di un mosaico romano.
context_page_description: Culture consists of the social behaviour and norms in human societies transmitted through social learning. Molluscs play a variety of roles in culture, including but not limited to art and literature, with both practical interactions—whether useful or harmful—and symbolic uses.
  Practical interactions with molluscs range from their use as food, where species as diverse as snails and squid are eaten in many countries, to the employment of molluscs as shell money and to make dyestuffs and musical instruments, for personal adornment with seashells, pearls, or mother-of-pearl, as items to be collected, as fictionalised sea monsters, and as raw materials for craft items such as Sailor's Valentines. Some bivalves are used as bioindicators to monitor the health of marine and freshwater environments.
  Harmful interactions with molluscs include the stings of cone snails and the venomous bites of certain octopuses; blue-ringed octopuses bite only when provoked, but their venom kills a quarter of the people bitten.
caption: Roman mosaic from the 'House of the Dancing Faun', Pompeii, showing an octopus struggling with a crayfish
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