As one of the most commercially important whelks,Rapana venosa(Valenciennes,1846),is native to the Sea of Japan,Yellow Sea,East China Sea and the Bohai Sea.The studies on it focus on reproductive biology and ecological characteristics in our country.The constant failures of R.venosa’s artificial breeding show that we still don’t understand reproductive process of R.venosa well.R.venosa is a large predatory gastropod with broad environmental tolerances,usually taking bivalve species as food.So the further studies of its feeding habits would provide a basis for understanding this species’s ecological characteristics which may promote the development of artificial breeding.So in this study we describes the feeding behavior of R.venosain controlled laboratory settings.It showed the first feeding behavior which consumed 0.01 g of bivalves tissue at 10.4 ℃.Daily feeding was increasing constantly due to the temperature rise and reached 0.54 g at 16.20 ℃,the maximum during the period had four days of feed periodicity without mating.However,before the whelks ate less following the increase of mating rate,the feeding of the whelks climbed up firstly along with the variation of temperature in the period with mating behavior.The max daily feeding amount of fresh tissue was 5.32 g per whelk when the mating rate reached the minimum 0.03 at 18.05 ℃.The new feed periodicity was 3.72 days.The relationship between feeding(c)and temperature(t)without mating behavior was expressed as c=0.01t²-0.24t+1.18,r=0.97.With the existing of mating,the relationship between feeding(c)and temperature(t)was expressed as c=-0.13t²+5.18t-48.08,r=0.61;meanwhile,the relationship between feeding(c)and mating rate(m)was expressed as c=-2.92 m+3.33,r=-0.48.We concluded that the temperature and mate rate had important impacts on feeding amount significantly and speculated that R.venosa has a feeding periodicity about 4 days from this work.According to the results,before the mating behavior occurring frequently,temperature is the major factor on R.venosa’s feeding.Then the feeding amount was decreasing with the increasing of mating rates,which showed the most important factor is changed from temperature to mating rates.Otherwise,the feeding periodicity of R.venosa during this period may relate to the characteristics which shaped in natural conditions.