Cone Snails may look interesting but you DO NOT want to mess with them!
They are venomous and can kill not only fish but humans too. :O -SO STAY AWAY!-
Cone Snails have other commom names such as- Conus, Cone Shells, or just Cone.
The genus of them are the Conidae Family -aka: The Cone Snail Family-
Some people even use their shells as jewelery. (So you might have seen ones shell)
Medical use of the venom
The appeal of the cone snail's venom for creating pharmaceutical drugs is the precision and speed with which the various components act; many of the compounds target a particular class of receptor, to the exclusion of any other. This means that in isolation, they can reliably and quickly produce a particular effect on the body's systems without side effects; for example, almost instantly reducing heart rate or turning off the signaling of a single class of nerve, such as pain receptors.The venom of some cone snails, such as the magician cone, Conus magus, shows much promise for providing a non-addictive pain reliever 1000 times as powerful as, and possibly a replacement for, morphine.[19]
Many peptides produced by the cone snails show prospects for being potent pharmaceuticals, such as AVC1, isolated from the Australian species, the Queen Victoria cone, Conus victoriae. This has proved very effective in treating postsurgical and neuropathic pain, even accelerating recovery from nerve injury.
The first painkiller derived from cone snail toxins, ziconotide, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2004 under the name "Prialt". Other drugs are in clinical and preclinical trials, such as compounds of the toxin that may be used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy.[20]
-Wikipedia.org-
What is the risk of getting stung?
The bright colors and patterns of cone snails are attractive to the eye, and therefore people sometimes pick up the live animals and hold them in their hand for a while. This is risky, because the snail often fires its harpoon in these situations. In the case of the larger species of cone snail, the harpoon is sometimes capable of penetrating the skin, even through gloves or wetsuits.
-Wikipedia.org -
Where are they?
There are over 600 different species of cone snails.[2] This family is typically found in warm and tropical seas and oceans worldwide, and reaches its greatest diversity in the Western Indo-Pacific Region. However, some species of Conus are adapted to temperate environments, such as the Cape coast of South Africa,[6][7] the Mediterranean,[8] or the cool waters of southern California (Conus californicus),[9] and are endemic to these areas.
