Geography cone
Conus geographus · The geography cone is a predatory cone snail that lives in tropical Indo-Pacific reefs and hunts small fish with venom.
Also called Geographer cone, Geographic cone.
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Taxonomy
| Kingdom | Animalia |
|---|---|
| Phylum | Mollusca |
| Class | Gastropoda |
| Order | Neogastropoda |
| Family | Conidae |
| Genus | Conus |
| Species | Conus geographus |
Where it lives
Coral reefs of the tropical Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea to Fiji.
Fun facts
- The geography cone fires a harpoon-like, venom-tipped tooth into its prey, then uses a proboscis to pull the prey inside to eat it.
- Its venom is a complex cocktail of hundreds of different toxins, and it is potent enough to kill humans.
- This snail uses a form of insulin as a weapon, making a fish's blood sugar crash so the fish is stunned and easy to swallow.
- Its nickname is the "cigarette snail", a dark joke that a victim would only have time to smoke a cigarette, though real stings take about one to five hours to kill.
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The Geography cone was the creature in the Marine daily on November 10, 2026. Can you identify tomorrow's from its photos? Every day brings a new creature to place from kingdom to genus, map and name.
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Facts and taxonomy adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).