Known from illustrations in books dating from the late 17th century, L. canarium is an Indo-Pacific species occurring from India and Sri Lanka to Melanesia, Australia and southern Japan.

The animal has an elongated snout, thin eyestalks with well-developed eyes and sensory tentacles, and a narrow, strong foot with a sickle-shaped operculum.

A molecular analysis conducted in 2006 based on DNA sequences of histone and mitochondrial genes demonstrated that Laevistrombus canarium, Doxander vittatus, and Labiostrombus epidromis are closely related species.

The dog conch is an economically important species in the Indo-West Pacific, and several studies indicate that it may be suffering population declines due to overfishing and overexploitation.

Malacologists and ecologists have recommended a reduction in its exploitation rate; initiatives in Thailand are attempting to ensure the possibility of reproduction in young-adult individuals and manage the natural populations in general.

L. canarium demonstrates the imposex phenomenon, but is resistant to sterility caused by it; therefore, this species might be useful as a bioindicator for organotin pollution monitoring near Malaysian ports.

[10] In 1758, the dog conch was formally described and named Strombus canarium by Swedish naturalist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who originated the system of binomial nomenclature.

[11] The original description given by Linnaeus in his book, Systema Naturae, is in Latin: "S. testae labro rotundato brevi retuso, spiraque laevi."

[2] The taxon Laevistrombus was introduced in the literature as a subgenus of Strombus by Tetsuaki Kira (1955) in the third printing of the first edition of Coloured Illustrations of the Shells of Japan.

No type specimen was designated, and Kira gave no formal description or statement of differentiation, as required by the ICZN code to validate the name.

Rüdiger Bieler and Richard Petit (1996) considered it a nomen nudum, and the authorship was transferred to Robert Tucker Abbott (1960), who had provided a proper description and illustrations of Laevistrombus and specified a type species, Strombus canarium L., in the first volume of his monograph Indo-Pacific Mollusca.

Leo Man In 'T Veld and Koenraad de Turck (1998) considered that L. canarium and L. turturella are distinct (yet sympatric) species, based mainly on the shell morphology and a radula comparison.

[5] However, when Zaidi Che Cob reviewed a number of Strombus species in 2009, examining both shell characters and anatomical data including details of the genitalia, operculum, and radula, he concluded that L. turturella was simply a morphotype, and therefore a synonym of L. canarium.

[1] Adult specimens have a moderately flared, posteriorly protruding outer lip,[5][7] which is considerably thickened and completely devoid of marginal spikes or plicae.

[4] The corneous operculum is dark brown, and its shape is fairly typical of the family Strombidae: a slightly bent sickle, with seven or eight weak lateral serrations.

[citation needed] The external anatomy of the soft parts of this species is similar to that of the other members of the family; the animal has a long, extensible snout and thin eyestalks (also known as ommatophores), with well-developed lens eyes at the tips.

The large foot of the animal is narrow and strong, able to perform the leaping form of locomotion that is also found in other species of the Strombidae (such as the queen conch).

This erroneous conception was based on the writings of French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, whose classification scheme grouped strombids with carnivorous sea snails.

[citation needed] After internal fertilization the female produces and spawns a long, gelatinous tubular structure containing multiple eggs.

[citation needed] In about 110–130 hours the embryo of L. canarium grows from a single cell to a veliger (a larval form common to marine and fresh-water gastropod and bivalve mollusks)[38] and then hatches.

[17] After hatching, the larvae can be assigned to four distinct developmental stages throughout their short planktonic lives (based on morphological features and other characteristics).

[citation needed] Metamorphosis in L. canarium can be recognised by loss of the larval velar lobes and the development of the typical leaping motion of juvenile true conches.

[1] Studies from 2008 to 2009 indicate that L. canarium has been overexploited and overfished in many areas; malacologists and ecologists have recommended reducing exploitation rates to maintain its availability as a natural resource.

[40] Initiatives in the southern Thailand province of Phuket intend to increase depleted natural stocks of L. canarium by reintroducing cultured animals in local seagrass beds.

High concentrations of these compounds are commonly present in seawater near shipyards and docking areas, exposing nearby marine life to harmful effects.

[41][42] In a 2011 paper, Cob and colleagues found that imposex rates are high in dog conch populations near Malaysian ports; however, the researchers could not detect any cases of sterility in affected females.

The authors concluded that females of L. canarium often develop a penis when seawater contains organotin compounds, but the phenomenon does not cause sterility in this species.