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.
