page_title: Seashell
section_title: Musical instruments
hierarchical_section_title: Seashell / Molluscan seashells / Cultural significance / Musical instruments
caption_attribution_description: The traditional royal guards march around Gyeongbokgung(one of the royal palaces) in Seoul every morning.
context_page_description: A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washed up on beaches by beachcombers. The shells are empty because the animal has died and the soft parts have been eaten by another animal or have decomposed.
  A seashell is usually the exoskeleton of an invertebrate, and is typically composed of calcium carbonate or chitin. Most shells that are found on beaches are the shells of marine mollusks, partly because these shells are usually made of calcium carbonate, and endure better than shells made of chitin.
  Apart from mollusk shells, other shells that can be found on beaches are those of barnacles, horseshoe crabs and brachiopods. Marine annelid worms in the family Serpulidae create shells which are tubes made of calcium carbonate cemented onto other surfaces. The shells of sea urchins are called "tests", and the moulted shells of crabs and lobsters are exuviae. While most seashells are external, some cephalopods have internal shells.
context_section_description: Seashells have been used as musical instruments, wind instruments for many hundreds if not thousands of years. Most often the shells of large sea snails are used, as trumpets, by cutting a hole in the spire of the shell or cutting off the tip of the spire altogether. Various different kinds of large marine gastropod shells can be turned into "blowing shells", however the most commonly encountered species used as "conch" trumpets are:
  The sacred chank, Turbinella pyrum, known in India as the shankha. In Tibet it is known as "dung-dkar".
  The Triton shell also known as "Triton's trumpet" Charonia tritonis which is used as a trumpet in Melanesian and Polynesian culture and also in Korea and Japan. In Japan this kind of trumpet is known as the horagai. In Korea it is known as the nagak. In some Polynesian islands it is known as "pu".
  The Queen Conch Lobatus gigas, has been used as a trumpet in the Caribbean.
  Children in some cultures are often told the myth that you can hear the sound of the ocean by holding a seashell to ones ear. This is due to the effect of seashell resonance.
caption: Korean military procession with Charonia trumpets
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