'Clam Licking Salt' VIDEO Shows Mollusk Trying To Dig With Foot, Not Eat

WATCH: What Is This Little GuyDoing?

Well, this is strange. A recently uploaded YouTube video seems to show a clam licking up salt -- a scene that apparently has grossed out some viewers.

The video -- check it out above -- was posted by YouTube user Ken Blanchard, who wrote in the video description, "Clam licking salt. This amuses me greatly."

But that isn't the clam's tongue, and the little guy isn't eating.

A similar video went viral last year, also showing what many viewers assumed was a hungry clam. At the time, Dr. Dennis Hedgecock, professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California, told The Huffington Post that the clam was actually trying to dig with its muscular foot, which is what looks like a tongue.

"Clams don’t have tongues, in fact," Miriam Goldstein, a marine biologist in the national Knauss Sea Grant fellowship program, told The Huffington Post last year. "So what that clam is doing is it’s trying to find a place to burrow... clams live in mud and sand and they use their foot to help them dig."

The way the clam is moving its foot around in the video also suggests it might be trying to get a better sense of its waterless environment -- and escape.

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