Call me lazy- I really didn’t feel like looking this one up.
Anyway, to all who know of the “legend of the Sand Dollar” it goes into what different parts of the sand dollar have come to represent. I do fine through most of the “explanation”, but then there are those “5 doves of peace”. There is the dual meaning that on both levels I fail to grasp.
Why 5? WHy not 3 or 9…
What are these things really?- how do that actually function on the sand dollar when it is still alive. I found it interesting to find out that sand dollars are covered with tons of tiny brown hairs when they are alive in which they use for locomotion.
=) thanks in advance all and seasons greetings & all that jazz.
Wow. That is a heinous piece of glurge, isn’t it? At the very least, it’s a pretty strained sort of metaphor. Sort of equivalent of seeing the virgin mary on a cheese sandwich.
Anyway, according to this, if you break open a sand dollar, you get “many hard, loose, white pieces” which are the teeth. Maybe they’re dove-shaped – but it’s kind of a reach. It might also be the petalloids which appear to be some kind of foot.
Ok, that just brings up more questions sure now I know these things are teeth(kind resemble some of my sharks teeth now that I think about it- ever get one of these things knawing on your finger?-“ahhhhh, sand dollarrrrr” the killers of the deep “just when you thought it was safe…” ok I digress)
What I was saying is that when you follow your link finagle it says that snails are one of it’s natural predators and if that isn’t hard enough to believe; if you follow the link for snails at the bottom it tells you the damn things can … eh? “swim” … but… it’s a Fckin snailllll … synonymous with"slow" as in “snail mail” or the typical everyday knowledge that snails are the slowest creatures on EARTH… swimming… HAH…
And btw-Aldiboronti- there was a reason I did not list the legend’s phrasing- notice I how I worded my inquiry " for those of you who know of the legend…"
this was to avoid stupid religious quips like coffecat’s
I understand what CC meant about it being silly to assign a specific meaning to something that has it’s own purpose, but it’s not like it’s the first time that happened.
In summary- I was attracting the target audience that actually knew about this legend therefore they would probably have some Christian influence or just like stories in general and I wouldn’t hurt all you poor atheist’s ears with the big bad “J” word… please consider that specific thought might of gone into a person’s inquiry before augmenting it so that everyone and their 4th cousin can make a stupid comment about this Aldiboronti. I am just saying, maybe you could ask next time…k?
In summary, thank you for an answer finagle, now there is just one part of this to go.
On the religious level…anyone know why 5 doves? Or was it just cuz, 5 teeth fell out of the thing… lol later all
I’m not the OP, but I don’t think you need to apologize. As someone not familiar with the legend, I appreciated that you posted the text of it, as I probably wouldn’t have looked it up otherwise. The OP seemed to want to limit the discussion to those already familiar with the legend, but I don’t think that’s the way things work around here.
There really are five things inside of a sand dollar which can, with a little imagination, be construed as white birds. Why five in a sand dollar, I assume for the same reason that starfish have five arms (the two being related). In other words, no particular reason, just that echinoderms tend to have fivefold radial symmetry.
Why five doves in the legend, I suspect that it’s just to match the five in the echinoderm, since I’ve never heard of any other particular significance to five doves. The only doves of significance in the Bible are the one that Noah sends out scouting at the end of the Flood, and the one which represented the Holy Spirit decending on Jesus at his baptism. Doves were also called for for some sacrifices under the Jewish law, and you have the two turtledoves in the song at the second day of Christmas (since turtledoves especially have a reputation for mating for life, and are therefore a symbol of love), but doves don’t come in fives anywhere in folklore.
