Bernd,

Although my primary interest in shells is the cowries, I was a SCUBA diver
first, then a SCUBA instructor and always interested in marine snails.

For a while, I kept three small saltwater aquaria to observe the living mollusks
that I found while diving: one had some Conus textile (used to 'clean' other
snail shell -- see Cone Wars in the CONCH-L Archives), another had some C.
marmoreus bandanus (again, to clean shells) and the third had a large C.
striatus which I had found in a cavity (under a small coral head stump) from
which it could never have escaped. It was such a excellent night hideout for
fish that the shell had stayed there and grown too large to get back out! I kept
this fish-eater for more than a year and I 'fed' it skipper fish from tide
pools.

The answers to your questions are that often an engorged piscovorous Conus
striatus can burrow into the sand if the sand in deep enough. Once approximately
a week has passed, its meal is disgorged as a glob of mucus-enveloped goo.

An odd observation of this Conus striatus is that, after about its fourth meal,
it "realized" that the fish, once stung, would not get far enough away to be
'lost.' Thus, it would 'spear' it and then release the dart instead of clinging
to it until the short struggle had ceased. Next it would cruise the tank until
it found the fish and then it would engulf it with its stomach.

A funny sidebar to this is that it once, in pursuit of a freshly introduced fish
and with its threatening probiscis waving about, fired its radular tooth through
its own siphon! More laughable yet is that it then tried to ingest itself! After
a few minutes, it realized something wasn't working and went after the fish
again. The spear stayed in its siphon for nearly a month before disappearing.

I hope there is some useable information somewhere in that.


Bob Dayle (a.k.a. makuabob)
http://cowry.org


_____________________________________________
Quoting Bernd Sahlmann <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Listers,
>
> I always wonder how a Conus would ingest and digest a fish. The tackling and
> engulfing is shown in videos, but what will happen afterwards? The animal
> will not be able to retract into its shell until the prey is digested. There
> must be some extracorporal digestion because there are no radula teeth left
> for scraping down the prey. What is the mechanism by which the food is
> transported into the midgut diverticula to be finally incorporated by the
> digestive cells? Do the Conus expell the bones of the fish?
> I have not found any references dealing with those aspects up to yet. Can
> anybody tell me the whole story?
> Best regards
>
> Bernd Sahlmann
> from Cismar, Germany
>
> www.hausdernatur.de
> www.mollusca.net
>
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