Molluscivore

Known molluscivores include numerous predatory (and often cannibalistic) molluscs, (e.g.octopuses, murexes, decollate snails and oyster drills), arthropods such as crabs and firefly larvae, and, vertebrates such as fish, birds and mammals.

A similar behaviour, durophagy, describes the feeding of animals that consume hard-shelled or exoskeleton bearing organisms, such as corals, shelled molluscs, or crabs.

[3] The walrus eats benthic bivalve molluscs, especially clams, for which it forages by grazing along the sea bottom, searching and identifying prey with its sensitive vibrissae.

[4] The walrus sucks the meat out by sealing its powerful lips to the organism and withdrawing its piston-like tongue rapidly into its mouth, creating a vacuum.

As many molluscs are protected by a shell, the feeding techniques applied amongst molluscivore fish are highly specialized and usually divided into two groups: "crushers" and "slurpers."

Loaches are specialized slurpers, and will make use of their characteristically shaped snout in order to grab hold of, then suck out the animal living inside the shell.

The black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus) commonly feeds by crushing large molluscs with pharyngeal teeth, extracting soft tissue, and spitting out shell fragments.

[5] Two snail-eating cichlids, Trematocranus placodon and Maravichromis anaphyrmis, have been tried as biological control agents of schistosomes in fish ponds in Africa.

[7] The common name of some fish reflects their molluscivorous feeding, for example, the "snail-crusher hap" (Trematocranus placodon), ""red rock sheller" (Haplochromis sp.

[15] Using their massive and powerful claws, adult Florida stone crabs (Menippe mercenaria) feed on acorn barnacles, hard-shelled clams, scallops, and conch.