Sea Stars are related to sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sand dollars, they are echinoderms, meaning "spiny skinned". They move about on tiny tube feet and they have to breathe through their skin. Sea Stars eat mussels, scallops, clams and other mollusks by grasping the shells and slowly pulling them apart. When they get a small opening between the shells, the sea star pushes its stomach out of its' mouth and into the mollusk. The stomach digests the animal out of the shell, leaving just the empty shells behind. Sea stars can regenerate lost body parts. If one loses a leg, it will grow another. Sometimes a lost leg may even grow a new sea star!
The correct name for these 5-armed echinoderms is sea star, not "starfish" since they are not related to fish in any way. Sea stars are often left exposed on the rocks and pier pilings during low tide; Sea stars breathe through their skin, as long as they stay wet from the spray they can survive until the next high tide. Some of these sea stars are orange and others are purple.
This beautiful sea star has lost an arm, the lost arm could regenerate a whole new body! This was seen in a tide pool in Washinton.
