How Does the Slow Cone Snail Catch Prey?

shallow tropical waters around the globe. Their pretty, cone shaped shells are intricately patterned and brightly colored, apprized by seashell collectors, and their venom is fascinating to biomedical researchers and science fiction writers alike, a pretty high profile for a very slow, not particularly aggressive animal that spends its days toddling after worms, fish, and other snails for dinner. For example, In the real world, their venom has been used in therapies from diabetes treatment

to terminal pain management. And this is a little bit of a deep cut, but take the Jurassic Park film sequel of the Lost World. In the movie, an air gun with venom darts is used to take down Peschi dinos. The active ingredient is purported to be an enhanced venom from the cone snail species Conus propuis, ends, of which the movie says is the most powerful neurotoxin in the world.

Before the article, this episode is based on how stuff work spoke with Helena Safavi, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah who studies conesnails and their venom. She said, in the movie, the venom is described as the most powerful neurotoxin in the world that acts within one two thousandth of a second, faster than the velocity of nerve conduction. None of this is true, but nevertheless

very entertaining. Conesnails are very slow animals that cannot graze on algae like their non venomous snail relatives, but also have no means of mechanical prey capture. That is to say, they can't bite or grasp like a shark or cat. And despite the lack of teeth and claws, all cone snails are impressive predators. Safavi said a when a slow animal wants to hunt other creatures, it has to evolve

potent venom to be successful. Particularly those cone snails that prey on fish have to have toxins that can potently immobilize the fish prey before it swims away. One of the most remarkable things about the thousand ish species of cone snail is that there's almost no overlap in the toxins that are made by each A Safavi said, this shows how fast these toxins evolve. Even very closely related species have only around five to ten percent overlap, with

each species making several hundreds of toxins. One can estimate that there are around half a million different toxins present in cone snails. Because their venoms are unique to specific species, some species deliver a very minor sting and others could kill you. A Safavi explained there are about forty known fatalities by con snails, and nearly all, if not all, were caused by a single species. Conus geographis commonly known

as the geography cone. Some of the toxins in this species can cause acute respiratory failure and potentially heart failure. It's also one of the species that can inject larger quantities of venom compared to most other cone snails. Compared to snakes and even scorpions and spiders, death from cone snail stings are extremely rare. Cone snails might not have fangs, but most have a venom covered harpoon that they use

to incapacitate their prey. Okay mollusks, like snails, often have a radula a type of combination tooth and tongue structure. It's often a ribbon like structure with many tiny teeth, and it helps them scrape up or cut down food. In the case of cone snails, the radula has a venom sack at its base and it's barbed at the other end it can dart out. It's some four hundred miles an hour. That's about six hundred and fifty kilometers an hour instantly incapacitating passing prey, so it doesn't really

matter that conesnails are slow pokes. All the snail has to do is reel its prey into its mouth. Other cone snails, like the aforementioned geography cone creep up on sleeping fish and shoot out a cloud of chemicals, one of which is insulin that numbs their prey and sends them into a sort of hypoglycemic coma before swallowing them whole. Yet other cone snails will strike a fish but won't tether it with their harpoon. The fish will swum away, but will fall under the influence of the snail's venom

pretty quickly. All the snail has to do is follow its prey and gobble it up. These are just a few con snail strategies, but with so much diversity in conesnail venom, we have a lot to learn, Safavi said. We know very little about the various ways that conesnails use their venom in the wild. A colleague of mine recently showed that some con snails use toxins that mimic mating pheromones to lure worms out of their It's really

fascinating what these animals are capable of. Today's episode is based on the article the con snail is a slow but highly venomous predator on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Jesslynshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and as produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.