Because all cone snails are venomous and capable of "stinging" humans, live ones should be handled with great care or preferably not at all.

In the Journal of Molluscan Studies, in 2014, Puillandre, Duda, Meyer, Olivera & Bouchet presented a new classification for the old genus Conus.

In 2009 John K. Tucker and Manuel J. Tenorio proposed a classification system for the cone shells and their allies (which resorb their inner walls during growth) was based upon a cladistical analysis of anatomical characters including the radular tooth, the morphology (i.e., shell characters), as well as an analysis of prior molecular phylogeny studies, all of which were used to construct phylogenetic trees.

In 2011 Bouchet et al. proposed a new classification in which several subfamilies were raised to the rank of family:[14] The classification by Bouchet et al. (2011)[14] was based on mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA testing, and built on the prior work by J.K. Tucker & M.J. Tenorio (2009), but did not include fossil taxa.

However, as a result of molecular phylogeny studies in 2011, many of those genera were moved back to the Turridae, or were placed in new "turrid" families within the superfamily Conoidea.

Analysis of nucleotide sequences indicate that all living species of Conidae belong to one of two clades that diverged about 33 million years ago.

One clade includes most of the species in the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic regions, which were connected by the Central American Seaway until the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama less than three million years ago.

The other clade includes most of the species in the eastern Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, which were connected by the Neo-Tethys Sea until 21 to 24 million years ago.

A component of the venom of Conus magus, ω-conotoxin, is now marketed as the analgesic ziconotide, which is used as a last resort in chronic and severe pain.

The biotechnology surrounding cone snails and their venom has promise for medical breakthroughs; with more than 50,000 conopeptides to study, the possibilities are numerous.