Scientists have been enthralled by cone snails’ devious antics for decades. Read: The secrets of the toxic disco clam. Had Agatha Christie been a mollusk, she might have been proud. This sort of predatory mimicry is a devious strategy for an otherwise lethargic hunter: If you can’t beat them with speed, narc them and murder them. Several ingredients seem to closely resemble chemicals naturally made in fish, worms, and other mollusks in manufacturing them, cone snails can turn their prey’s bodies against themselves. Some 1,000 species of cone snails exist, each, as far as scientists can tell, with its own unique recipe for venom. These poor souls are among the many victims of cone-snail venom-one of the deadliest and most dizzyingly complex substances ever described in an invertebrate. Depending on the snail species at hand, some of the corpses might be fish, limp from hypoglycemic shock they could be worms, sexually stimulated and hot to trot. “These are not racing snails,” says Eric Schmidt, a biochemist at the University of Utah.īut when the snails eat, they feast, filling their digestive tract with a glut of battered bodies in various states of drug-induced disarray.
The snails are superficially docile creatures, and can be painfully shy sometimes they go weeks in a lab without taking a single bite of food, cringing at the slightest change in temperature, lighting, or human supervision. There is a similar question on the possibility of that ability in worldbuilding.stackexchange ( link) which you can review.The aptly named cone snail wears a house that resembles a Ben & Jerry’s receptacle, filled not with ice cream but with a squishy mollusk that sports an extendable, trunklike proboscis. As the question has those criteria, these don't count. It seems that the nearest thing is the urticating hairs in tarantula which is mentioned by but tarantula doesn't shoot, it detaches hairs to make them airborne ( Wikipedia/urticating hair). Spitting spider which is mentioned by doesn't store solid silk to shoot, it sprays the materials ( Wikipedia/spider silk). Harpoon-like organ in cone snails which is mentioned by doesn't detach from the body (albeit detaches internally) and it must work in this way in order for the snail to hold and draw its prey ( Wikipedia/cone snail). There are tethered projectiles like cnidocyst in Cnidaria, but they don't detach ( Wikipedia/cnidocyte). I think these criteria mean "aimed and detached". No, there are not animals which produce solid projectiles to shoot/launch/throw for defence or hunting. Posts with unsourced content may be edited or deleted. Want to improve this post? Add citations from reputable sources by editing the post. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing 2021 Jan. Wikipedia: projectile use by non-human organisms (with other examples of projectile use) If you would include use of tools, in projectile use/shooting animals, apes and elephants are known to use stones as throwing weapons (see wiki-page linked below). One cone snail can contain poison to kill about 700 people, and people stung by cone snails can get severely injured or even die (fatality reported to 15-75% according to Kapil et al, see below). It is also worth noting that the harpoon and its venom is a potent defence weapon also against humans. These harpoons are not re-used, and a cone snail can have up to 20 harpoons at different stages of development (see Cone snail toxicity). (from, Courtesy Joseph Schulz, Occidental College) (from, Courtesy Manuel Jimenez Tenorio, Universidad de Cádiz) The “harpoon“ structure is also very similar to a human made harpoon (see picture below) According to high-speed camera capture the harpoon is launched in just 200 microseconds, with an acceleration similar to a gun. The harpoon is launched at prey at close distance, and is used to poison and stun prey, and later to pull them in. A good exemple should be the “harpoon” in cone snails (Conidae), which is created from a modified tooth inside their proboscis.
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