Flamingo tongue snail (Cyphoma gibbosum)
The flamingo tongue snail is a species of small but brightly colored sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Ovulidae, the cowry allies. This Cyphoma is the most common of several species in the genus which lives in the tropical waters of the western Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina to northern coast of Brazil, including the Bermuda, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Lesser Antilles. When it is alive, the snail appears bright orange-yellow in color with black markings. However, these colors are not in the shell, but are only due to live mantle tissue which usually cover the shell. The mantle flaps can be retracted, exposing the shell, but this usually happens only when the animal is attacked. The shells reach on average 25–35 millimetres of length. It feeds by browsing on the living tissues of the soft corals on which it lives. This species used to be common, but it has become rather uncommon in heavily visited areas because of over-collecting by snorkelers and scuba divers, who make the mistake of thinking that the bright colors are in the shell of the animal.
photo credits: LASZLO ILYES, H. Zell, reefguide, jaxshells
I am ashamed to say as a teenager in the mid to late 1970′s living in Puerto Rico my friends and I used to collect all sorts of live shells as a hobby.Flamingo tongues were one of the species we took with no concern of how we harvested many times cleaning sea fans of every shell when we came across them. I use to make necklaces and earnings from the pink shells for my mother and some of the high school girls I knew.
(via trynottodrown)
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