For those _really_ interested in cowries, I have explored the range of possible labial tooth counts for a few of the Indo- Pacific species of Cypraea with breeding populations in Hawaii. By using the average labial tooth count and its standard deviation from each of these four species, I have “inflated” their populations to determine how big it would need to find a cowry with a labial tooth count greater or smaller than the current range of labial teeth in the samples that I am working with. A small table of possibilities looks like this: my range of # shells in (“new” popul.) to get 1 Cypraea lab. teeth my sample # of shells shell w/ helvola 11-20 2,600+ 10,000 10 or 21 th fimbriata 17-26 500 1,150 16 labial th caputserpentis 13-22 300 5,000 12 labial th poraria 15-23 90 450 14 labial th So, to have a definite shot at finding a _Cypraea helvola_ with either 10 or 21 labial teeth, the chances are about one in ten thousand. (Yes, just like a lottery, or something.) To get one of 10 labial teeth AND one of 21 labial teeth, the sample would need to be nearly 20,000 shells! (That is, in Hawaii; populations in your area may vary.) Perhaps others have stats from cowries in their locales... Aloha, makuabob (a.k.a. Bob Dayle) _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com