Purple-mouthed Kookaburra Whelk
Gyrineum lacunatum
The Purple-mouthed Kookaburra Whelk is so named because of its striking profile resemblance to a perched kookaburra and the purple tinge around the aperture. In reality it is actually a species of triton - Family Cymatiidae. Members of this family are predators and scavengers feeding on bivalves, echinoderms, worms and ascidians. It lives on sandy-mud substrates and grows to about 30 mm in shell length. Other species of the genus Gyrineum also occur in Queensland waters.
The species is distributed across the Indo-West Pacific.
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