Cypraea tigris -Linne
Tiger Cowrie
2-4" 9cm
Common
$.20 to $2
Shell: The size, color, pattern, and form all vary widely. Dark spotting is interwoven with touches of white, orange, red, blue, and green, any or all. A growth series is needed to see its changes from chestnut to whitish with interrupted bands and zig-zags brown flashes, to closely set wavy blotches, and later perhaps a coat of white, and finnally to the dark spots against complex mature color. Hardly any markings on base, indistinct edges to blotches.
Animal: The foot has a gray-yellow pattern and a white margin, the distinct head has a pair of dark-grey tentacles, the grey-yellow siphon is fringed at the free end. The two mantle lobes, which can completely encircle the shell, bear branched papillae up to a centimetr (0.5") long, they are white except for the middle part which is gray-yellow, the radula is taenioglossan.
Region: Indo-Pacific, except in Red Sea where replaced by Cypraea pantherina.
Habitat: Under coral blocks, over a large range of depths in the infralittoral zone, usually on corals in the mid- and inner-reef sections.
Notes: All black and giant forms are known. Very similar to Cypraea pantherina.
