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Conus textile
When this attacks you, it tastes (or smells) you first and then it considers which poisons would be most effective, or perhaps, how it wants you to die. Cone shells create a multitude of poisons specific for different muscles or different species and will actually create different combinations according to the victim or situation. It may decide to stop your foot from moving so you can’t slide away, perhaps it has a poison for sight or smell so as to disorient and terrify you, it may go straight for the heart, or if it likes you, maybe it won’t poison you at all. This particular species normally eats other snails but it is one of the three fatal cone shells that can also kill a human. Guardian: Ben Collins
Spotted on Jan 17, 2015
Submitted on Jan 17, 2015
3 Comments
Congrats! This spotting has been featured as a PN Fact of the Day!
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Project Noah Fact of the Day: The textile cone is a carnivorous species of mollusk that injects venom into its snail prey to immobilize it. Several human deaths have been attributed to this species and all caution should be used to avoid getting envenomated. Within its proboscis is a harpoon-like radula that injects the venom and can be extended out as far as any part of its shell. It is found in the waters of the Red Sea, Indo-Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian Ocean from eastern Africa to Hawaii, and French Polynesia.
Nuestra naturaleza y sus sorpresas
this was actually spotted on Frankland Islands in Queensland but I can't get the map to work