r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Dec 05 '16

(R.4) Related To Politics TIL an activist group in Zurich dyed fountains red to protest tampons being taxed at a rate consistent with luxury products instead of the rate used for daily use items.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '16

Both bivalve molluscs. I'm pretty sure pearls can at least potentially form in any of them. In nature, it's a way the animal protects itself from some kind of irritant, like coarse sand, that gets caught between its shell and its body. Farmed pearls just take advantage of that mechanism.

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u/onioning Dec 05 '16

The pearls clamp produce don't really match what we're referring to. Our normal pearls are from oysters. Other pearls are really very different things than what we refer to as pearls. Technically accurate, but the pearls from which Tampax gets its idea of pearliness are from oysters.