Figure 4.

The strike and stalk strategy for prey capture. Shown is a specimen of Conus flavus envenomating its prey. Once the cone snail has detected the presence of a fish, it extends its strikingly striped proboscis and flails it around, resembling the arms of a brittle star. When the tip of the proboscis gets close to the fish, it stings the fish but does not tether it. After envenomating its prey, the snail (which was buried in the top panel) unburies itself and begins to follow the fish. Once the fish is immobilized, the snail engulfs it completely (bottom panel). Two instances of envenomation were observed for Conus flavus. In the first, there was apparently an insufficient amount of venom injected, and the snail followed the fish around for many minutes, but the fish never was completely immobilized. In the second, after envenomation the fish was immobilized quickly upon envenomation and began to tremble and stiffen its musculature. The snail engulfed it from the tail first. These observations suggest that these snails have some components of the lightning-strike cabal (described in the text for the taser and tether strategy).