---
title: Humpbacked Conch (Gibberulus gibberulus)
scientific_name: Gibberulus gibberulus
common_name: Humpbacked Conch
taxon: Prosobranchia
published: 2026-08-11T15:43:16.990Z
updated: 2026-08-11T17:16:32.272Z
tags: Humpbacked Conch, Gibberulus gibberulus, Prosobranchia, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/prosobranchia/humpbacked-conch
---

# Humpbacked Conch (*Gibberulus gibberulus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Prosobranchia (*Prosobranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 6 cm
- **Depth:** 0-10 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Shallow sand flats and seagrass, often in numbers
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- small smooth conch with a distinct swelling, or hump, on the last whorl
- cream to gray with fine brown zigzag markings
- long orange-ringed eye stalks that emerge before the animal moves
- shell to 6 cm

A small smooth conch, cream to gray with fine brown zigzags and a distinct swelling on the last whorl that gives it the name. Rarely over 6 cm (2.4 in), and rarely alone - shallow sand flats can hold dozens per square meter, with nothing showing but pairs of eye stalks.

The eyes go up first. Long, orange-ringed and startlingly alert for a snail, they emerge from the sand well before the animal commits to moving, and they are the reason a patch of apparently empty sand suddenly turns out to be watching you. Anything that looks like a cone snail - their main predator - gets an immediate response.

That response is the leap. The claw-shaped operculum drives into the sand and the whole animal flips itself backward, again and again, in a scramble that clears a surprising distance. High-speed footage of this species was used to work out how the whole family moves, and the answer was that a conch does not crawl at all - it hops.

## Also known as

- **English:** Gibbose Stromb, Humpbacked conch, Humped Conch
- **Hebrew:** סטרומבוס ירוד-שפה
- **Italian:** Strombo gobbo
- **Czech:** křídlatec hrbatý
- **Japanese:** ネジマガキ
- **Chinese:** 駝背鳳凰螺
- **Russian:** Стромбус горбатый

## Scientific synonyms

- *Gibberulus gibberulus gibberulus* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Strombus (Gibberulus) gibberulus* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Strombus gibberulus* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Strombus gibberulus gibberulus* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Strombus labiatus* Perry, 1811

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/prosobranchia/humpbacked-conch)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*