Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

by Mary Roach

Those of you who swallow oysters without chewing them may be curious as to the fate of your appetizers. Mollusk scientist Steve Geiger surmised that a cleanly shucked oyster could likely survive a matter of minutes inside the stomach. Oysters can “switch over to anaerobic” and get by without oxygen, but the temperature in a stomach is far too warm. I asked Geiger, who works for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, about the oyster’s emotional state during its final moments inside a person. He replied that the oyster, from his understanding, is “pretty low on the scale.” While a scallop, by comparison, has eyes and a primitive neural network at its disposal, the adult oyster makes do with a few ganglia. And mercifully, it is likely to go into shock almost immediately because of the low pH of the stomach. Researchers who need to sedate crustaceans use seltzer water because of its low pH. Geiger imagined it would have a similar effect on bivalves. But you might like to chew them nonetheless, because they’re tastier that way.