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Blacktab
Blacktab Whenever I find a live Cypraea teres, I place it in a specimen jar of sea water. Invariably within an hour or so it seems to grow an immense oversize foot which is subsequently discarded, reminiscent of a lizard or snake shedding its skin. Having done so the animal of the shell remains happily alive for several hours - as indeed does the discarded foot - which, when observed through a magnifying glass, appears to pulsate in very slow motion rather like the 'bell' of a jelly fish. This discarded foot frequently remains on the move for several hours before life - if life it is - appears to be extinct. C. punctata and C. cribraria show a similar tendency to discard outsize feet though much less frequently than C. teres. Have other collectors observed this rather strange phenomena? And can our zoological experts give us an explanation?
Dr. E. Alison Kay, technical editor of Sean Raynon Sabado added this note on Autotomy in Cypraea teres:
Stasek (1967, Occ. Pap. Calif. Acad. Sci., No. 61) reviewed autotomy in the mollusks but reports it for only three families of prosobranchs, the Trochidae (Stomatella, Stomatia, and Gena), Calyptraeidae (Calyptraea), and Harpidae (Harpa). In all the cases the posterior part of the foot is autotomized as it is in Cypraea teres. Stasek notes that "prior to autotomy all these shelled gastropods have bodies too large to be entirely contained within the shell, while afterwards the shell completely covers the soft parts; he feels that "the great majority of instances of autotomy in the Mollusca have, or... can reasonably be predicted to have, evasive qualities."
Captain A. Deynzer collected 22 specimens of Cypraea caputserpentis (Linnaeus), between Mariveles and Cabcaban on Bataan, Philippines; all 22 specimens were damaged. The shells were pitted, wrinkled and grooved and the pattern on the dorsum was missing in parts and blistered.
The exact cause of the damage is not known, but it is presumed that an unusually high concentration of mud at the locality may be responsible for the damage, since mud particles are visible under some of the blisters.
West Australia Shells, one of our advertisers, recently sent us another series of photos of living shells. These are just as beautiful as they have been in the past. Each time we see these excellent color slides we want to say, "Hang the budget" and make a big splash with a full color issue. For this issue, at least, you will have to be satisfied with a black and white reproduction of Cypraea friendi vercoi on egg cluster (see below). The shell is one of the prettier of the sea shells. The eggs are brilliant light orange and have, apparently, been deposited in a leaf-like container.
Rick Mayor found his first Cypraea chinensis and two Cypraea gaskoini off the Kahala Hilton Hotel in about 60 foot depth. Rick also found a Xenuroturris castenella in 20' depth at Makua.
Teenage brothers Jim and Tom Forrest came up with a rare find. Tom found a very freshly dead Cypraea semiplota at Ewa Beach (beauty with real live color). Tom found a live Cypraea talpa. Jim came up with a live Conus retifer in six inches of water. This was found at north shore of Kauai.
Blacktab While I was chatting with Tony Kalnins the other day, the subject of conversation drifted around to that of sea shell coloration. Since Tony is a dealer in shells and I'm a collector of Cypraeidae, the topic wasn't unusual – but the consequences of this discussion proved to be unusually enlightening and somewhat amusing.
My companion and I were discussing "golden" variants of sea shells, Zoila friendii in particular. After agreeing that some golden shells were not unlike some sun-bleached specimens, Tony half-jokingly suggested baking a C. friendii. We decided to try it. He supplied a couple of chipped specimens which I was to bake in my electric oven.
A few days later I got around to the project. I selected the darker of the two C. friendii for the oven, thinking that the second specimen would serve as a reference (I expected a relatively minor color change). The selected shell had a black-brown base, this color extending up above the margins. The dorsum had the usual irregularly placed dark brown blotches on a bluish background. I used a small thermostatically controlled oven, placing the shell upon a piece of asbestos board. I warmed the shell slowly, taking about one hour to reach 400 F. After one half hour at this temperature, I thought I could see a lightening of the color around the margins. After one hour at 400 F, I again looked through the glass of the oven door. The black-brown just above the margins was definitely turning orange. And so it went. . . .
After six hours at the same temperature, I started reducing the heat. Forty-five minutes later I opened the oven door for the first time since placing the shell within. I removed the warm sea shell. That color! A lovely peach-orange around the margins and base - no sign that the shell had ever been predominantly brown. The fossula remained white and much the same as that of the unbaked specimen. The dorsal blotches, which had been lighter than the basal color, were now a slightly darker shade of orange than the base. The blue ground color had changed to a cream. The overall effect was that of pastel orange hues, with the markings of a typical C. friendii still readily visible. Two or three hairline cracks or stress marks were noted under low magnification -probably from too rapid a thermal change. As with most C. friendii, the shape of this shell was far more irregular than most other sea shells, and this could cause uneven stresses in expansion and contraction – and the tiny cracks. I have seen once-frozen sea shells with far more noticeable stress marks.
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