Catch a wave and you'll be ... riding with the clams? As if the surf wasn't crowded enough, UC Davis biomechanics researcher Olaf Ellers has found that thousands of clams routinely jump into the big ones. In studies of coquina clams on a North Carolina beach, Ellers reports that the tiny clams "listen" for the biggest waves, jump out of the sand to ride the flow, and then put a foot out to dig in again. In recent articles in Biological Bulletin, Ellers calls it "swash-riding." The clams ride shoreward during rising tides and seaward during falling tides, emerging several times per tidal cycle to ride the waves. Tiny as little toenails, the clams are dense and aerodynamically shaped for the negative lift they need to travel across the sand without losing control in the crashing surf. The first to detail this mechanism of clam locomotion, Ellers noticed that the clams rode only the largest 20 percent of the waves. In the lab, he found that clams jumped in response to deep bass sounds akin to big waves. "These clams are doing something spectacular and rather sophisticated for clams," Ellers says. He speculates the movement could keep the filter feeders close to food and cool under the sun's damaging rays.