The cannibal of the sea! That is what people call the sunflower starfish because it eats
the flesh of its own kind. It isnt part of the fish family so it has been renamed as the sea star. You probably dont know
much about this particular starfish. The most interesting things about it are what it looks like, what and how it eats and
how it moves.
Some people think the sunflower sea star is beautiful. Some people think it is scary because
it looks like an alien and it has slits in its head. The sunflower sea star has 15-to-24 legs and can reach a diameter of
2 feet! It can be purple, red, pink, brown, orange, yellow and green. It is soft and mushy when you touch it: all other starfish
are stiff.
The sunflower sea star It lives in on rocky surfaces of the ocean from Alaska to Southern
California. It lives in the low intertidal zone which only becomes dry during the lowest of tides. The sunflower starfish
practically flows across the ocean floor. It moves VERY fast compared to other starfish. and moves at the rate of 3 meters
per minute. They have up to 15,000 tube feet and they all have to be coordinated in their stepping movements. They are almost
like suction cups that stick to the ocean floor and it pulls the rest of its body up with the first legs.
The sunflower starfish likes to eat fish, sea urchins, crabs, and dead or dying squid.
They also like gastropods, chitons and sea cucumbers. And of course, they eat the flesh of their own kind - other starfish.
Bivalves (clams) are one of their favorite foods and how they eat them is pretty interesting. Their stomach comes out of their
mouth and pushes into the clam and sucks the clam right out of the shell!
You can unhappily find sunflower sea stars dining in your crab pots and fishing gear (we
did). Its scientific name is Pycnopodia Helianthoides. Another really interesting thing about the sunflower starfish is that
if it gets injured and one of its legs come off it can regrow it. This process is called regeneration.
The sunflower starfish was a great invertebrate to research. I liked it even more because
Ive seen them in Alaska! Now you know what it eats, what it looks like, how it moves and a lot of other interesting information.
Beautiful? Or scary?
