Don , these reports are absolutely fascinating. You ever thought of
scripting this and selling to network TV, I know that BBC would run it.
Afterall they did run fawlty towers ......
Curious though , what are the cypraea eating ?? I thought they are algae
eaters (herbivorous)??
Please keep up the reporting, Mark James & Peta Susan Bethke
3001 South Ocean Dr. Suite 4-V
Hollywood, Florida
33019-2804
U.S.A.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Barclay <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, April 15, 1999 11:11 AM
Subject: Cone Wars Round 5
 
 
>Hi 'L'ers,
>
>And so it goes.  Everyone seemed to have survived the
>night, even if Mark Episcopatus hadn't moved.  I could
>still see his siphon, and it even retracted a little occa-
>sionally, so I took that as an encouraging sign.  As I
>looked more closely at the cypraea erosa that Art had
>staked out the night before, I couldn't see any mantle
>exposed, so I decided to remove him from the tank and
>give him a physical.  As I suspected, only an empty
>cowry shell remained.  Looks like Art had his erosa
>dinner after all!
>
>Everything remained calm in the aquarium the rest of the
>day.  The cowries stayed parked in the same spots, with
>the arabicas at the top of the tank, Helmut Lynx in the
>corner behind a clump of grass, and the others scattered
>around at random.  As the evening wore on, I closed the
>window blinds and turned out the aquarium lamp, and
>waited to see if the action would pick up.  It did.
>
>Within two minutes after extinguishing the light, Eduardo
>came bursting out of the rubble, and headed straight for
>Helmut without any hesitation.  I grabbed my camera,
>and waited to see what would happen.  Eduardo crawled
>directly onto Helmut's dorsum and extended his long,
>red proboscis around the cowry's shell.  Helmut was still
>completely retracted into his shell, but sensed immediately
>that something was wrong.  He went from being totally
>withdrawn to having his entire foot extended in a matter
>of only two or three seconds (awfully fast for a cowry).
>Helmut started trying to climb the glass, and indeed
>was lifting the conus magnificus off the bottom, when
>Eduardo moved his proboscis around to Helmut's head.
>I thought, "This is it for poor Helmut," and snapped a
>photo.  The rule that the act of observing an event may
>actually affect its outcome certainly applied here, but
>not in the same sense that the physicists would apply
>it.  The flash stunned Eduardo for just a moment, long
>enough for Helmut to gain an inch of vertical glass and
>dump Eduardo off in the gravel.
>
>Having narrowly escaped, Helmut cruised around the
>tank the rest of the evening, never letting Eduardo get
>near him.  Eduardo remained active, and followed
>Helmut's trail for hours.  Several times he passed very
>near the other cowries, but showed absolutely no in-
>terest.  Eventually, Eduardo returned to the bottom
>of the aquarium, apparently resigned to the fact that
>this was not the day that he would catch Helmut.  He
>sat feigning interest in a clump of branch coral until
>I went to bed.
>
>Art never resurfaced.  I'm not sure how long a conus
>textile will remain buried after he's eaten, or even how
>often they feed, but it looks like a good chance to find
>out.  Tom did finally resurface, but never showed any-
>where near the interest in chasing cowries that he
>had shown the night before.  And Ross meandered
>around the aquarium a bit too, but he also seemed
>less than excited.  Maybe the lack of fresh cowry
>trails everywhere made the not-quite-so-new surround-
>ings seem more normal?
>
>With things settling down and the cowries on patrol,
>I decided to call it a night.  The only other thing I had
>noticed was that my little puffer had now started to
>follow the damsel fish's example, and had begun to
>nip at both the cowries and the cones.  I decided to
>remove him, and returned him to his ocean home.
>
>The next morning when I took inventory, it was much
>the same as the day before.  Eduardo and Art were
>still buried, and so was Tom.  Even Mark was now
>half-buried, about six inches from where he had spent
>the past two days!  Only Ross was exposed, and
>had the anterior part of his shell inserted into the
>aperture of the juvenile cypraea talpa.  Helmut had
>found a new perch at the top of the aquarium in one
>of the front corners, and the other cowries were once
>again distributed around the tank.  The only thing
>that was amiss was a single, empty cypraea moneta
>shell, obviously someone's meal from the night before.
>
>Ross and the juvenile talpa were still in the same
>positions late in the afternoon.  Curiosity finally got
>the better of me, and I took my tongs and extracted
>the talpa from the tank.  It was very dead, but only
>half eaten.  I don't know if the fish had eaten on the
>cowry, or some of the tiny hermit crabs, or if Ross
>had enjoyed some success himself.  If Ross was the
>perpetrator, he certainly didn't do the extraction job
>that the molluscivorous cones usually do on cowries.
>Then again, Ross is relatively small, and the cowry
>fairly large.  He certainly seemed to have shown
>some interest in the cypraea talpa, though, judging
>by their positions, whether the cowry was living or
>already dead.
>
>Once again the daylight hours went by peacefully,
>and only when the lights were out did the aquarium
>come to life again.
>
>(...to be continued...)
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>
>Don
>