Flower urchin

Scientific name : Toxopneustes pileolus

Urchin with short spines, completely covered with flower shaped pedicellaria, beige-pinki in colour. Test with concentric red and pink bands. Test diameter 14 cm.
Locally common, it lives in bay and lagoon, on sandy or rubble bottoms. It likes to cover completely itself with rubble and detritus, disappearing. The sting from the pedicellaria injects a poison, extremely painful and sometimes lethal also for humans.
As the stinger is very small, it not always can pierce the hard skin on our hand palm, therefore we can often touch it with no consequences. But anyway, the sting on other body parts can be very damgerous.
Easy to identify by the flower like pedicellaria.

	Description	Author	Place	Size
	Toxopneustes pileolus	DANIELE IOP	Indonesia, Bunaken	500 kB