Printable Biology Word Search on Mollusks and Annelids

Snails, clams and squid beside earthworms and leeches: two invertebrate phyla, with a meaning for each word.

Name Date

Mollusks and Annelids Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 20 words found

LGDWARODBSFEBPC

EAUSOANNELIDNMT

USPEXDDGPUIPAAL

NBHADUHCAGBATNO

RRORFLIASBIMQTF

RIDTAATBCEVIFLC

NSOHAOTENTACLEO

DTIWMYEMOLLUSKC

CLAOUSETZEVLQST

MEMRSTNLLGEFUNO

AHRMSEGMENTHIAP

NSZCERBPEPONDIU

SHELLTPPCNGILLS

UTLALLSEHBSJEAC

DDNMSIIQVFOOTZO

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

SnailSNAIL
SlugSLUG
TentacleTENTACLE
ClamCLAM
OysterOYSTER
MusselMUSSEL
BivalveBIVALVE
GillsGILLS
SquidSQUID
OctopusOCTOPUS
EarthwormEARTHWORM
SegmentSEGMENT
LeechLEECH
BristleBRISTLE
MolluskMOLLUSK
AnnelidANNELID
MantleMANTLE
ShellSHELL
FootFOOT
RadulaRADULA

20 words from the Mollusks and Annelids Key Terms list.

Start from a list

Easy: words go across and down.

More options

Show clues, not words

Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

The puzzle changes as you go. See the puzzle

Answer key: Mollusks and Annelids Word Search

LGDWARODBSFEBPC

EAUSOANNELIDNMT

USPEXDDGPUIPAAL

NBHADUHCAGBATNO

RRORFLIASBIMQTF

RIDTAATBCEVIFLC

NSOHAOTENTACLEO

DTIWMYEMOLLUSKC

CLAOUSETZEVLQST

MEMRSTNLLGEFUNO

AHRMSEGMENTHIAP

NSZCERBPEPONDIU

SHELLTPPCNGILLS

UTLALLSEHBSJEAC

DDNMSIIQVFOOTZO

SNAIL, SLUG, TENTACLE, CLAM, OYSTER, MUSSEL, BIVALVE, GILLS, SQUID, OCTOPUS, EARTHWORM, SEGMENT, LEECH, BRISTLE, MOLLUSK, ANNELID, MANTLE, SHELL, FOOT, RADULA

Next step Print the ranks from domain to species Type in the terms from your own invertebrates unit

All 129 words

Snails and Slugs 21

Abalone A sea snail with a flattened, ear-shaped shell lined with mother-of-pearl.
Algae Plant-like living things that many snails rasp from surfaces.
Breathing pore The opening on the right side of a land slug's mantle that lets air in.
Conch A medium to large sea snail whose shell has a high spire.
Cone With "snail", a highly venomous hunter of the sea.
Gastropod A member of the second-largest animal class; the name is Greek for stomach and foot.
Herbivore A plant eater, as many snails are.
Limpet An aquatic snail with a cone-shaped shell and a strong, muscular foot.
Lung What most land snails breathe with, in place of a gill.
Nudibranch A soft-bodied marine gastropod, often brightly colored, that sheds its shell after the larval stage.
Operculum A trapdoor that closes the shell opening of many water snails.
Pond With "snail", a freshwater kind that scrapes algae from surfaces.
Sea hare A big marine gastropod whose soft inner shell is made of protein.
Slime The slippery layer that a land snail lays down under its foot and travels on.
Slug A land gastropod with no shell, or only a very small one.
Snail A gastropod with a coiled shell on its back.
Spiral The winding shape of a coiled shell.
Tentacle A flexible, movable organ; a gastropod's head typically has two or four, with eyes.
Torsion The half-turn twist of the body that every gastropod goes through as a larva.
Univalve A name once used for the class of snails and slugs.
Whelk A meat-eating sea snail with a swirling, tapered shell.

Show all 129 words (108 more)

Clams and Other Bivalves 22

Adductor The muscle that pulls the two half-shells shut.
Bivalve A mollusk with two hinged half-shells and no head.
Burrow To dig into sand or mud, which helps many bivalves avoid predators.
Byssus A bundle of threads with which a mussel fixes itself to a hard surface.
Clam A bivalve that spends most of its life half buried in sand.
Filter To strain food from water, as an oyster does.
Freshwater Describes the rivers and lakes that are home to some mussels and clams.
Geoduck A very large saltwater clam of the eastern North Pacific, from Alaska to Baja California.
Gills The organs a bivalve uses both to breathe and to gather food.
Hinge The joint along one edge where a clam's two half-shells meet.
Ligament The flexible band that joins a clam's two half-shells along one edge.
Mussel A bivalve with a long, lopsided shell, found in salt and fresh water.
Nacre The strong inner shell layer, also the material of which a jewel of the sea is made.
Oyster A bivalve of salt or brackish water; many have a shell of somewhat irregular shape.
Pearl A hard, shiny object formed inside the soft tissue of a living mollusk that has a shell.
Plankton The drifting food that oysters trap as water passes over their gills.
Reef A dense mass of oysters that forms a large colony.
Scallop A bivalve that can swim short distances and has a ring of simple eyes.
Shellfish A food word for clams, oysters and their relatives.
Shipworm A long, thin bivalve that eats wood sunk in salt water.
Siphon A tube through which a buried clam draws in and sends out water.
Valves The name for a bivalve's two half-shells.

Squid, Octopus and Cuttlefish 22

Ammonite An extinct cephalopod, typically with a coiled shell.
Argonaut An open-ocean octopus whose female makes a paper-thin egg case.
Arms The eight flexible limbs around the mouth of an octopus.
Beak The two-part mouthpart of every living cephalopod.
Camouflage Blending with the background, one way an octopus hides from predators.
Cephalopod A member of the mollusk class whose Greek name means head-feet.
Chromatophore A color-making cell that lets a cephalopod change its brightness and pattern.
Colossal With "squid", the largest living invertebrate, weighing up to 700 kilograms.
Cuttlebone The hard, brittle internal shell of one family of cephalopods.
Cuttlefish A cephalopod whose internal shell is used to control its buoyancy.
Den A sheltered place where a female octopus lays and guards her eggs.
Funnel The tube through which a cephalopod expels water to move.
Giant With "squid", a deep-ocean species that may reach 13 meters.
Hearts An octopus has three: one for the body and two for the gills.
Ink A dark liquid that most cephalopods release into the water to escape.
Intelligent Octopuses are counted among the most ___ of all invertebrates.
Jet A stream of water forced out to push a squid quickly along.
Nautilus A cephalopod with a chambered outer shell, often called a living fossil.
Octopus A soft-bodied mollusk with eight limbs and a beaked mouth at their center.
Pen The rod-like internal support of a squid, made of chitin.
Squid A soft-bodied cephalopod with large eyes, eight arms and two longer feeding limbs.
Venom All octopuses make it, but only the blue-ringed kinds are known to be able to kill a person.

Earthworms 22

Angleworm A slang name that comes from the use of these animals as hookbait in fishing.
Arches With "aortic", the paired vessels in segments seven to eleven that act as an earthworm's hearts.
Belt The shape of the swollen band toward the front of an adult earthworm.
Cast With "worm", the small coiled pile of soil a burrower leaves at the surface.
Compost Decayed plant waste; red wigglers are kept to make a rich form of it.
Crop The part of an earthworm's gut between the esophagus and the gizzard.
Darwin Naturalist whose studies of earthworm intelligence opened a long line of research.
Detritus Decomposing plant and animal parts, a food of earthworms.
Earthworm A soil-dwelling annelid that feeds on organic matter.
Gizzard A thick-walled, muscular part of the gut that grinds up food.
Humus The stable organic matter of soil, formed as plant and animal remains decay.
Moist Damp, like the compost-rich ground where earthworms are commonly found.
Oligochaete A member of the annelid group that includes all the earthworms.
Pharynx The part of the gut whose muscular walls draw food in like a pump.
Prostomium The fleshy lobe overhanging an earthworm's mouth, used to feel its surroundings.
Red wiggler A worm of decaying material, the usual choice for a compost bin.
Regenerate To grow back lost body sections, which adult earthworms can do to a degree.
Segment One of the repeated ring-like sections of an annelid's body.
Setae Tiny hair-like structures found on an earthworm's body sections.
Skin The body covering through which an earthworm breathes.
Soil The mix of minerals, organic matter, water and gases in which earthworms live.
Tunnel A passage that an animal digs through the ground.

Leeches and Bristle Worms 20

Abyssal Describes the deep ocean plains where many bristle worms live.
Annuli External ring markings on the bodies of earthworms and leeches.
Bristle A stiff hair; marine annelids carry many on each body segment.
Chaetae The scientific name for the stiff chitin hairs of an annelid.
Chitin The tough material of a polychaete's bristles and a squid's pen.
Feather duster A marine worm with a plume of branching gills that builds a parchment-like case.
Fireworm One of a family of marine annelids, many with bristles hardened by carbonate.
Hirudin A substance in a leech's saliva that keeps blood from clotting.
Leech A segmented worm with a gripping disc at each end; most kinds live in fresh water.
Lugworm A burrowing sandworm of the seashore.
Medicinal Describes the best-known leech, a European species that feeds on blood.
Parapodia Paired fleshy flaps on each segment of a marine worm, used for moving.
Parasite An animal that lives on another and feeds from it, as some leeches do.
Polychaete A mostly marine annelid whose name means many bristles.
Proboscis A tube-like mouthpart; some leeches have one in place of jaws.
Ragworm A marine worm of a family with about 500 species.
Sea mouse A marine worm of the genus Aphrodita.
Somites A leech's body segments: every species has 32, or 34 counting two in the head.
Tube worm A sea animal that makes a mineral case around its body and can pull back into it.
Vent With "hydrothermal", a hot deep-sea spring where giant tube worms live.

Mollusk and Annelid Body Plans 22

Annelid A segmented worm; the phylum's name comes from the Latin for little ring.
Cavity With "mantle", the space used for breathing and excretion.
Chiton A marine mollusk protected by plates; about 940 living species are known.
Coelom The main fluid space inside the body, surrounding the gut and other organs.
Exoskeleton A hard outer covering, such as a snail's shell or a chiton's plates.
Foot The muscular underside a mollusk moves on.
Hemocyanin A copper-holding protein that carries oxygen in the blood of some invertebrates.
Invertebrate An animal with no backbone.
Larva The young, free-swimming stage that hatches from the eggs of many mollusks.
Malacology The branch of zoology that studies mollusks.
Mantle The body wall that covers a mollusk's organs and typically makes the shell.
Mollusk A soft-bodied animal with a head, a foot and a mantle; the phylum is the second largest.
Nephridia Paired organs that remove wastes, doing a kidney's job in invertebrates.
Nerve cord The main signal pathway of many invertebrates, running along the underside of the body.
Phylum A major group of animals; Mollusca and Annelida are two.
Radula A ribbon of tiny teeth that most mollusks feed with; bivalves have none.
Septa The inner walls that separate the segments of many annelids.
Shell The hard covering, typically chalky, that encloses and protects a mollusk's soft parts.
Soft Describes the body of every mollusk.
Trochophore A free-swimming larva of the plankton that moves by bands of cilia.
Veliger The planktonic young of many sea snails and most bivalves.
Worm A long, soft, legless animal; the segmented kinds are annelids.

How it works

This printable biology word search on mollusks and annelids starts with 20 key terms: Snail, Slug, Clam, Oyster, Mussel, Squid and Octopus for the mollusks, Earthworm and Leech for the annelids, and body words such as Mantle, Radula and Segment.

Read the full guide

Three lists of mollusks

Snails and Slugs has 21 words, with Limpet, Whelk, Abalone, Nudibranch and Operculum. Clams and Other Bivalves has 22: Hinge, Adductor, Siphon, Byssus, Nacre. Squid, Octopus and Cuttlefish has 22, such as Beak, Ink, Funnel, Chromatophore and Cuttlebone.

Two lists of annelids and one of body plans

Earthworms has 22 words, among them Setae, Gizzard, Prostomium and Cast. Leeches and Bristle Worms has 20: Polychaete, Parapodia, Ragworm, Lugworm, Hirudin. Mollusk and Annelid Body Plans, with 22, sets Mantle, Radula and Foot beside Coelom, Septa and Nephridia.

Sea hare, Tube worm, Feather duster and 4 more two-word entries hide closed up: TUBEWORM.

Questions and answers

What is the difference between mollusks and annelids?

A mollusk has a soft body with a head, a foot and a mantle, which typically makes a shell. An annelid is a worm whose body is a row of ring-like segments.

What are examples of mollusks?

Snails and slugs, which are gastropods; clams, oysters, mussels and scallops, which are bivalves; and squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses, which are cephalopods. Chitons are mollusks too. Other animals without backbones are on the invertebrates word search.

What are the three types of annelids?

Most textbooks still divide annelids into three groups: polychaetes, which are almost all marine; oligochaetes, which include the earthworms; and leeches. Research since 1997 has changed that scheme.

Is an octopus a mollusk?

Yes. An octopus is a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusk of the class of cephalopods, with squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses. It has three hearts and a beaked mouth at the center of its limbs.

Can I print the mollusks and annelids word search with a key?

Yes, free: the sheet and its answer key come out as two pages, Letter or A4. For a harder sheet tick Show clues, not words: Foot is then printed as "The muscular underside a mollusk moves on."

All 129 words

Snails and Slugs 21

Clams and Other Bivalves 22

Squid, Octopus and Cuttlefish 22

Earthworms 22

Leeches and Bristle Worms 20

Mollusk and Annelid Body Plans 22

How it works

Three lists of mollusks

Two lists of annelids and one of body plans

Questions and answers

More tools