๐ฆ Animal world ๐ฌ Sea animals
The starfish
๐ In short
The starfish is a pretty, star-shaped sea animal; most have five arms, and some have more than 40! Starfish live in every ocean in the world, and their skin is rough and bumpy. They're not fish.
๐คฉ Did you know?
- Most starfish live between 3 and 5 years, and some longer.
- A starfish has no brain and no blood.
- A starfish's mouth is in the middle of its underside.
- There are about 2000 kinds of starfish.
๐ Find out more
๐ Hundreds of little feet
Under each of a starfish's arms are rows of little tube feet with suckers on the end. It walks slowly with them and grips rocks tightly.
๐ A strange way of eating
Starfish love eating mussels and oysters. A starfish grips the shell with its arms and pulls until it opens a little, then pushes its stomach out of its mouth and into the shell to digest the food!
๐ก A new arm
If a starfish loses an arm, a new one grows. In some kinds, a single arm can even grow into a whole new starfish!
๐ฏ Eyes on the tips
At the tip of each arm is a tiny simple eye that tells light from dark and helps it find its way.
๐ธ More pictures
๐งฉ Test yourself
1 How many arms do most starfish have?
2 What happens if a starfish loses an arm?
3 Which picture shows โThe starfishโ?
๐ฆ Discover more
๐ท Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons
- NOAA ยท CC BY-SA 2.0
- No machine-readable author provided. Mbz1 assumed (based on copyright claims). ยท CC BY-SA 3.0
- Pam Brophy ยท CC BY-SA 2.0
