Recently, I listened to a young kid talk excitedly about a trip to the coast, during which she saw two different starfish. One, she said, was smaller than her pinky finger nail. The other was so big she had to stretch her arms out wide to show us its breadth.
It reminded me of a summer day, years ago, when my sister and I peered into the ocean at a place where the edge of the Island was a sheer cliff face dropping sharply into the water until it disappeared into the murkiness. On the visible portion of the rock face, just under the surface, we could see a ton of the five-legged purple stars we were used to seeing in the bay, but right in the middle was something we’d never seen before. A bright orange and yellow one, with multiple, uncountable legs. It was a sun star! Being kids, it was our natural inclination to want to grab it and pull it out to look closer, but it was far enough down that there was no way to do that without somersaulting into the briny, so we had to satisfy ourselves with admiring it from afar. That’s why I don’t know much about the sun stars.
But, I have learned a few things about the sea star family in general.
· There are, by some counts, as many as 2000 different species of sea stars in our oceans. That’s a lot!
· While most star fish have only five legs, some species can have up to fifty of them.
· Life span also varies from species to species, but some kinds can live as long as 34 years.
· The biggest known starfish is the “Sunflower Starfish”, found along the West coast of North America. It can reach a meter, or a little more than three feet in diameter.
When I was a kid, I remember hearing someone say that when a starfish loses a leg, not only will it actually grow a new one, but the discarded leg will actually grow a new starfish! It turns out, that’s absolutely true. When a tiny baby starfish is growing out of one big leg, sometimes they call that a “comet fish”. (Starting to notice an astrological theme going on here?) They can do this because most of their major organs happen to be stored in their arms.
Now here’s an interesting one. Believe it or not, a sea star has neither brains nor blood. It’s true. The liquid rushing through their veins is just purified sea water.
By the way, just as a side note, star fish aren’t actually fish at all. They have no gills. They breathe through tiny tubes in their feet. (I’m still trying to figure out how they survive in low tides.) They are classed, instead, as echinoderms.
Wow! Who would’ve guessed there was so much to know about these unobtrusive little five-legged guys!
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