I've played with live Cypraea cervus down around the 7 Mile Bridge in
the Florida Keys. Those great big things are like fat furry little gray
rabbits. They stay extended and crawl all over your hand, even out of
the water. You almost have to abuse the cute things to get them to
retract their mantles, or at least it was so with the ones we found.
Taking one for its shell was almost more than I could do.  Why do you
suppose it is that, the larger a mollusk is, the more we (or is it just
I?) hesitate at killing one? When we were on the northwest coast we
found the huge Cryptochiton stellari abundantly on a rocky beach there.
I put one in my bucket, and carried it around a while, but then, when it
came time to go, I put that huge mollusc back.  I just didn't seem to
want the shell badly enough to murder the big lug! But trampling a whole
beachful of those black and white Batillaria minima down in Florida
wouldn't give me pause.

And speaking of Batillaria, which is way off the subject, did you know
that Batillaria, which used to be assigned to the Potamididae or
Mudcreeper (or Horn Snail) family, related to Ceriths, is now in its
very own family called, what else? Batillariidae?  Well I didn't. I
discovered this taxonomic nibble while playing in the pages of The
Southern Synthesis. It seems that J.M. Healy (1983) and Richard Houbrick
(1988) recommended that the subfamily be elevated to family rank, and
then Ponder and Waren in 1988 did so.  And another batillariid fact is
that Batillaria australis is the intermediate host for a form of
Swimmer's Itch in Australia.

I'd have given this a new subject line, but what?

Lynn Scheu
Louisville KY

"Lycette, Don" wrote:
>
> I've observed that c. carneola and nebrites immediately pull in their mantle
> and foot as soon as you turn over their rock.  They immediately fall off the
> rock into the sand and will not expose their mantle while you wait and watch
> (this assumes they are not sitting on eggs, in which case they hang on for
> dear life)....etc.