Mangrove drills (Chicocreus capucinus) on the Shores of Singapore

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Phylum Mollusca > Class Gastropoda > Family Muricidae

Mangrove drill
Chicocreus capucinus
Family Muricidae
updated Jan 11

Where seen? This large and rather elaborately textured drill is sometimes seen on mangrove trees. Feeding on the barnacles growing on mangrove trunks and other hard surfaces in mangroves.

Features: 4-5cm. Shell thick with sculptured ridges down the length. The shell, however, is often hidden by encrusting plants and animals. Shell opening rounded with teeth on the inner edge. Long siphonal canal. Operculum dark. It is also called 'Ketem' in Malay.

Pulau Sarimbun, May 05

What does it eat? It eats a wide variety of prey from barnacles, nest-building mussels to bivalves hiding in the mud and worms in rotten wood.

They are such voracious predators, that they exert a considerable influence over the kind of community of animals that are found where they are live.