20 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Starfish | Amazing Facts 4U
- There are about 2,000 species of starfish. Starfish is also known as sea stars.
- Starfish along with sea urchins and sea cucumbers are called echinoderms which have five-point radial symmetry i.e. Their body has five sections or multiples thereof arranged around a central disk.
- The starfish is not a fish. It is an animal. They do not have gills, scales, or fins like fish have and they move quite differently from fish. While fish propel themselves with their tails, sea stars have tiny tube feet to help them move along.
- Starfish can come in many colors. Some common colors are red, orange, yellow, and coral colors.
- Depending on the species starfish can be between 4 to 11 inches big and weigh up to 5 Kg.
- Starfish have no brains. Its mouth is on the bottom of its body, right in the center.
- Starfish don’t have blood in the system. Instead of blood, starfish has a water vascular system, in which it pumps seawater through its sieve plate to receive nutrients.
- Starfish has a tough covering on its upper side, which is made up of plates of calcium carbonate with tiny spines on its surface. This is useful for protection from predators.
- Amazingly starfish cannot survive in freshwater.
- Starfish has very small feet called tube feet. Each tube foot has a tiny suction cup at its tip which is used to walk and also to pump in oxygen. Thus starfish actually breathe through their feet!
- Starfish cannot swim. They move across the ocean by hundreds of tube feet on their arms and body.
- Starfish have eight eyes, one at the end of each leg which is actually a group of cells that are very sensitive to light which helps the starfish to view the movement and differentiate between light and dark. They don’t, however, see much detail.
- With more than 80,000 arms, the Basket Starfish has the greatest number of arms.
- The average lifespan of a starfish is 35 years.
- Starfish are carnivores meaning they are meat-eaters. They eat clams, oysters, snails, and tiny fish.
- Female starfish can make millions of eggs. Starfish release the eggs into the ocean never going back to care for them.
- The amazing fact is that starfish can change gender from male to female or female to male at any time.
- Amazingly, sea stars can regenerate lost arms. It can take up to a year for a lost limb to grow back. In fact, you can cut up a starfish into pieces and each piece will grow into a completely new starfish.
- The starfish has two stomachs. The cardiac stomach eats the food outside the starfish’s body. When the cardiac stomach comes back into the body, the food in it is transferred to the pyloric stomach.
- Starfish has an amazing method to kill an oyster. When an oyster senses that a starfish is near, it will quickly close its shell but the starfish wraps its arms around the shell and uses the suction cups on its tube feet to pry the oyster’s shell open. Starfish can actually pull its stomach out through its mouth as the oyster’s shell only opens a crack and, the starfish must slip its stomach into the shell and eat the oyster while it is still in its closed shell.
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