Ice Cream Cone + Gastropod = Our Next VPC

Hi, y'all. I've been checking out our latest VPC (Very Poisonous Creature) for a couple of days. Aside from getting sidetracked on YouTube watching videos of the Loch Ness monster for a couple of hours, I have learned some very interesting things about this ocean gastropod, known as the Cone Shell.photo: wickipedia.org Textile Cone

The snail is so named because the shell resembles an ice cream cone - except that's not ice cream in there. It's a big, muscular foot, and a big siphon tube mouth, and a couple of stalk eyes - oh yeah, and some nasty harpoon teeth.

Doot-De-Doo, hohum, hohum, along slides the snail, beautiful and harmless looking, with that proboscis sticking out, smelling the water. For what? For dinner. Then along comes a hapless little fish, or human hand or foot (curiosity killed the FILL IN THE BLANK), and chemicals secreted by the curious victims enter the proboscis of the snail.

It does a little searching with that long, skinny mouth/nose, and then...BAM!!! BAM, BAM!!! Dinner is served. Or in the case of the human hand, that little harpoon tooth has just delivered the goods. Which, of course, isn't really good at all, even if you've got a hold of such a pretty shell...

The story of the monkey who stuck his fist in the jar and then got beat over the head comes to mind...



Cone shells are very common. There are over 1000 species of cone shells, which have varying diets. They may eat other mollusks, sea worms, crustaceans, or small fish. Mostly, they are from 2 to 4 inches long, but the ones that eat fish grow up to 10 inches long. These fish-eating cone shells are the most dangerous to humans. Fortunately, there are only a few of these types - among them, the Textile Cone and Geography Cone. When their harpoon teeth are injected into the victim, they inject a milky venom which is a neurotoxin.

This venom will cause fish to be paralyzed in a few seconds, and to get a free slidey ride down a snail gullet. In humans, it causes blurred vision, slurred speech, numbness, and difficulty breathing (sounds like a few too many beers). If it is severe enough, it will cause respiratory failure in a few hours, and sometimes death.

There is no antivenin for the venom, so the only cure is life support and time, which allows the toxins to finally be dissipated by the body. Some say that about 20% of all cone shell stings result in death, more than the percentage for the cobra snake.

Although the bigger cones can be deadly, only fifteen deaths can be confidently attributed worldwide to the cone shell in the record books. The smaller ones (the vast majority of the cone species), produce a sting no more painful than that of a bee.

In spite of the downside to the venom of the cone shells, there is a great upside. The venom is very promising in serving as a basis for some very powerful and beneficial drugs. At the moment, there is research being conducted on its use as a cure for Alzheimer's disease, as well as a pain killer 1000 times more powerful than morphine, but without any side effects.

So on your next visit to the Great Barrier Reef, where there are 18 species of cone shells, a good rule of thumb is to keep your thumbs off of them. This will save you from a painful trip to the ER and being another guinea pig in cone shell venom research!!

Happy Snorkeling!

So, How Long IS That Reef??

If you've been following my blog and recent application video post, you might be wondering (like Mandy from the video) just how long that reef really is!! Or even WHAT it is (like Constance).

So I thought I'd be kind enough to answer these two questions for all you curious types.

But first check out this awesome footage from Tourism Queensland. You can find out a lot more info by checking out the media section at their site Island Reef Job.com

So the answer to the first question - "Where in the world IS the Great Barrier Reef?", as you've seen in previous posts, is the great country of Australia. Now to be more specific, it borders the northeast coast of the state of Queensland, Australia.

The answer to the second question is a bit more tricky. How long IS the Great Barrier Reef? I guess it depends on where you begin counting coral. Now if you wanted to you could really start counting at the southernmost tip of New Guinea and work your way down from there.

But even if you started in the far north at Somerset, Queensland, Australia and ended at Bundaberg, Queensland in the south, that would be 1480 miles (or 2387 KM for all you people in the rest of the world).


However, most estimates range in the mid-1200 mile range. But when you're talking about a living organism, things are in constant flux. I mean, if you got a big hurricane in it might pull up huge chunks of the reef, and well, then you've lost a few miles...

Then there are the Crown of Thorn Starfish, which eat up coral with gusto. They say as much as 30% of the coral has been digested by these critters. So then, do we count living reef, or dead reef? Dunno.


To all that coral I want to say hurry up and grow already, because the more the better, right? But you can't rush pure wonder...

Stay tuned for some outtakes, some more pics, and some more deadly VPC bios...