could you name a shell after me: Helmut
thanks Helmut
 
Helmut Nisters
Franz-Fischer-Str. 46
A-6020 Innsbruck / Austria / Europe
phone and fax: 0443 / 512 / 57 32 14
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
url: www.netwing.at/nisters/
 
or
 
Natural History Department of the
Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum Innsbruck
malacological collection
Feldstr. 11a
A-6020 Innsbruck / Austria / Europe
phone: 0043 / 512 / 58 72 86-37
 
----------
>
> Hi All,
>
> I did finally get the aquarium set up, and have been catching
> fish for it for the past three days.  I finally went out to catch
> some cones this afternoon, and caught most of the ones that
> I was hunting.
>
> I now have one conus textile, about 80mm ("Art"), one conus
> magnificus, 70mm ("Eduardo"), one conus episcopatus, about
> 65mm ("Tom"), another episcopatus about 55mm ("Mark"),
> and a conus canonicus, 50mm ("Ross").  I still plan to put an
> omaria or two in the tank, and a couple bandanus.  I'll have to
> make a trip to get a nice sized marmoreus for my experiment:
> I don't think a 30mm bandanus is a fair fight against an 80mm
> textile.
>
> To keep the guys from becoming unnecessarily cannibalistic,
> I also caught some cowries today, all but one of which is now
> crawling circles around the tank.  I collected one cypraea talpa,
> one lynx, four cauricas, one erosa, and four arabicas, plus a
> handful of annulus and moneta cowries.  I caught a few other
> cones too (catus, sanguinolentus, capitaneus) but decided not
 
> to include them in the equation.
>
> I didn't even get all the animals in the aquarium before I saw
> something I'd never seen before.  In my collecting bottle, my
> shy magnicus, Eduardo, snaked out his proboscis and stung
> one of the cypraea cauricas!  And he did this while he was
> FULLY RETRACTED into his shell!!!  He didn't eat the cowry,
> as I was in the process of moving them into the aquarium.  I
> dumped Eduardo's victim into the tank anyway, just to see
> what would happen.  The caurica partially retracted into his
> shell, but it almost looked like he wouldn't fit.  He proceeded
> to autotomize about the posterior 25% of his foot!  I've seen
> harps do this, as well as several species of nudibranchs, but
> never cowries.  He then remained on the bottom of the tank,
> motionless, for the next two hours.  I went and bought lobsters
> for dinner, removed the tails, and then fabricated a little scoop
> to get the dead cowry out of the tank, but...when I went in
> to remove him, he wasn't where I had left him.  In fact, he had
> crawled to the top of the tank.  It wasn't hard to tell which one
> he was, as only one of the cowries was missing a quarter of
> his foot!
>
> More updates as the saga unfolds.
>
> Sorry not to include any philosophical or morality statements,
> only shell stuff in this post.  Disclaimer:  Character names are
> all purely fictitious.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living
> or dead, is purely coincidental...
>
> Cheers from Pago Pago,
>
>
>
 
>
> Don
>