Cat cone

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Cat cone snail
Enclosure of Conus catus

Enclosure of Conus catus

Systematics
Partial order : New snails (Neogastropoda)
Superfamily : Conoidea
Family : Cone snails (Conidae)
Genre : Conus
Subgenus : Pionoconus
Type : Cat cone snail
Scientific name
Conus catus
Hwass in Bruguière , 1792

The cat cone or cat cone snail ( Conus catus ) is a snail from the cone snail family (genus Conus ) that lives in the Indo-Pacific and eats fish .

features

The body circumference of the snail shell of Conus catus is bulbous to broadly conical, convex towards the thread. In adult snails, the house reaches a length of 2.5 to 5.2 cm. The basic color of the case, the pattern of which can vary greatly, is white to bluish gray. The surface of the body can be yellowish brown, olive green, blackish brown or orange and red in color. On both sides of the middle there are sparse little spots and in the middle a narrow spiral band in the basic color. The uppermost whorls are red, sometimes white to brown. The thread forms a flat cone. The periostracum is yellowish brown, smooth and can be translucent.

The top of the gray to pale brown foot is speckled light brown to blackish brown and darker in front. The sole of the foot is speckled brown or monochrome and lighter at the ends. The white to yellow-brown rostrum is brown spotted or striped lengthways, closer to the front. The feelers are white. The sipho is white to gray and has brown spots.

The radula teeth, which are connected to a poison gland , have three strong barbs at the tip, while the rear barb has a curved tip. The saw and spur at the base are missing.

distribution

The cat cone snail occurs in the Indian Ocean around the Aldabra Atoll, Chagos , Madagascar and Mauritius , off Tanzania and KwaZulu-Natal and in the western Pacific Ocean to Hawaii and French Polynesia . In the Red Sea and off Oman , the cat cone is represented by the form nigropunctatus .

habitat

Cat cone snails live on rock ledges in the intertidal zone of the coast up to a depth of 20 meters or in coral reefs below the intertidal zone.

food

Cat cone snails eat small fish that are killed by a harpoon with a poisonous radula tooth . The poison is deadly to fish and other vertebrates, but does not affect molluscs or polychaetes.

literature

  • George Washington Tryon: Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species , vol. VI; Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 1884. C [onus] catus Hwass., P. 63.
  • Dieter Röckel, Werner Korn, Alan J. Kohn: Manual of the Living Conidae Vol. 1: Indo-Pacific Region . Verlag Christa Hemmen, Wiesbaden 1995. The texts on the individual cone snail species of the Indo-Pacific are published on The Conus Biodiversity website with the permission of the authors (see web links).

Web links

Commons : Conus catus  - collection of images, videos and audio files