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Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of I-Hart Radio.

Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Boglebaum here.

The gooey duck is not a type of duck, and it's not particularly gooey.

Spelled G-E-O-D-U-C-K, the goo-y-du-du-c-k, the goo-y duck is the world's largest burrowing clam,

averaging just over two pounds or right around a kilo in weight, including their shell.

But unlike, say, the giant clam, which is almost all shell, the gooey duck's shell is small compared to its soft

body. Its body length can be up to three feet or a meter long, and its shell is usually only about

six to eight inches long, or about 15 to 20 centimeters, which means that its shell only covers about

a fifth of the gooey duck's body.

That body is composed of a meaty mantle that fits mostly inside the shell, and a long, thick

neck or siphon that protrudes out from one end.

It has two openings at the tip of the siphon, so it looks sort of like an elephant's trunk

or a worm with spouts.

And, look, I'm not trying to be rude or edgy here. I'm just being accurate. It looks really phallic.

They're found in the northern part of North America's Pacific Coast, from Puget Sound, up along British

Columbia, and into Alaska.

Natural beds of them exist on many public beaches, but they're rarely visible, except at very low tides. I say beds because these clams make a home by burying themselves two to three

feet down, up to about a meter in the mud, sand, or gravel at the ocean's floor.

Once they're in, they're in for life.

They use their siphon to poke up above the seabed into the water.

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