What Do We Listen When We Hear The Ocean Through A Shellfish?

Walking by the ocean is always a pleasure. A greater pleasure is when you find big spiral shellfish in the sand and if you can hear the ocean through it. But shellfish are small to hold all of the water from the ocean. Then what’s the sound that we listen from it?

Actually, we listen the sounds from our environment. The inner part of the shellfish have a structure that allows it to reflect the sound waves in a specific way. As the sound waves are passing through the interior structure of shellfish the frequency is changing and the result is a sound similar, or often the same, as the sound of waves or the ocean.

You’ll realize that there are no sound when you listen to the shell in a quiet environment, for instance a closed room. So you need the sound from outdoors to “listen the ocean” in a shellfish.

But all of this is also related to our brain. Shellfish always produce different sounds, and our ears are influence by many sound waves with different frequencies. The ear, together with our brain, recognizes a different sound coming from the shell. Then, the brain detects only the sound we are focusing on and the sound that we want to listen. In this case, the brain is trying to detect new sounds and because you are close to ocean (or shellfish remind you to the ocean), it gives you the desired sound subconsciously.  

According to this theory, our own brains lie to us regularly. And it’s true. But after all, you get the chance to enjoy the ocean without getting into it, so that’s something.