Prey capture cone snails

The cone snails constitute one of the largest groups of animals that use venoms as their primary weapon for capturing prey (300—500 species). Furthermore, they have successfully envenomated a much wider variety of prey than has been observed for most venomous animal genera. 

The toxins identified from cone snails, nemerteans, cephalopod molluscs, etc. undoubtedly play some role in prey capture, but their importance relative to other predatory behaviors is generally unknown. For some predators, toxins may serve as a secondary rather than primary mode of... 

One of the most extensively studied families of peptide toxins, the conotoxins, is isolated from marine cone snails.140 141 Each snail produces a suite of 100-200 peptides in its venom, which is used for the capture of prey, and given that more than 500 species of cone snails are thought to exist, conotoxins represent an enormous diversity of peptide toxins. They have been classified into families, based on their target receptor specificity, and superfamilies, according to their... 

Elevating chemical combat to greater levels is not just within the purview of snakes but has also been accomplished by other animals. For example, cone snails use stealth to capture their prey, fish, which are harpooned by their projectile proboscis and injected with conotoxin, which blocks calcium influx at the end terminus of nerve... 

The cx)ne snails are predatory, venomous molluscs which use a common general strategy to capture prey (i, 5-7). All 300-500 species of Conus have a specialized venom apparatus, diagrammed in Figure 1 (8). A venom paralytic to the prey is produced in a venom duct and injected through a disposable, harpoon-like tooth (Figure 2). Paralysis of the prey can be remarkably rapid in the case of certain piscivorous cone species, the fish prey is immobilized in less than one second. 

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