Many thanks Tina

At last something I can look at here in the UK. I have a quite a number of 
Cypraea that I collected while scuba diving in Cypriot waters over the 
years. Quite happy to inspect them for octopus bite marks. Initial 
inspection does not appear to show many holes but maybe I am not looking at 
them correctly. Very interested in any photos you have that may increase my 
expertise in inspection.

Eddie

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There are 3 messages totaling 936 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. octopus 'drill'? (3)

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Date:    Mon, 10 Feb 2020 20:08:25 +0000
From:    Tina Petway <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: octopus 'drill'?

Several years ago when Fabio Moretzsohn was visiting the museum here in 
Houston, we were looking at a few drawers of Cypraea and he pointed out that 
several had been "bitten" by Octopus in order to feed.  The holes were 
almost all in the same area of interior attachment for each Cypraea species. 
And the holes thus made were elliptical rather than round.  It is possible 
for certain species of Octopus to use their beak to make a hole in some of 
the species of "thin shelled" Cypraea.  After this was pointed out, I began 
to look for more in our Collection here at HMNS that exhibited the same type 
of bite mark and I did find quite a few more that matched this type of 
feeding behavior by Octopus.  I have never seen this take place myself while 
diving, but I feel confident that Fabio would know his information about 
Cypraea to be correct.

I hope this is helpful and I will photograph a number of these specimens in 
order to further document this behavior.

Tina

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