Every year as a Beach Naturalist volunteer, I'm telling people to drop the shells, in many cases, sand dollars and don't take them off the beach. I tell them that a. if they are darkish brown/purple, they may still be alive - and you'll be killing them. Or if they have already died, the calcium in their shells is needed by the environment in the circle-of-life thing.
Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. But the more cool facts I let them know about the creatures, they more likely they are to put them back (aside, from the fact it's illegal to take shells out of a city park in the first place.).
So add this one cool fact, reported by Sandi Doughton of the Seattle Times, about sand dollars. When threatened as a larvae (in the living soup that is Puget Sound) they clone themselve before being gobbled up.
Photo by the Seattle Times
