# 1996 VHS • Eyewitness Shell 60 FPS

Eyewitness Shell is a documentary program from the BBC Eyewitness series, structured around the Eyewitness Shell book and produced in the series' white-background studio format with international location footage. The program examines shells as a survival strategy across hundreds of thousands of species: fossil shell history and the limestone landscapes formed by ancient marine creatures, the mythology of ammonites as petrified serpents in medieval Whitby, shell growth mechanics through the mantle's secretion of calcium carbonate, spiral growth patterns and the gastropod family, the mobility-protection tradeoff for shelled animals, bivalve filter feeding and the hinge muscle defense, predator-prey arms races among shells, the cone shell's paralytic sting, Portuguese man-of-war predation by immune mollusks, the Japanese carrier shell's decorative camouflage, scallop eyes and locomotion, the chitin exoskeleton of scorpions, woodlice, and lobsters, molting and its vulnerabilities, the internal shells of cuttlefish and giant squid, the nautilus and submarine design, Tyrian purple dye from the murex snail, wampum currency among Native Americans of the eastern United States, cowry shells as legal tender in Africa, pearl formation by oysters, the coconut palm's shell and the robber crab, barnacles and shipworm tunneling, the Brunel Thames Tunnel, giant clams, leatherback sea turtles, and land crabs on Christmas Island. The birds' egg shell is presented as a closing subject…

- Kind: Film
- Year: 1996
- By: The Vista Group®
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-EyewitnessShell)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/TheVistaGroup-EyewitnessShell?play=1)