source
The starfish or asteroids, have an internal skeleton of calcareous type and flattened body, with radial symmetry and five or more arms.
They have no head, and no brain.
Predators and carnivores, starfish hold their prey with their thousands of ambulatory feet -termined in suckers- and digest them from the outside, since their stomachs are reversible. Mollusks and crustaceans are a regular part of their diet, although they also eat other marine animals. You can eat anything the size of your arm or smaller.
- About 2,000 living species are known.
- There is a general belief that they bite by introducing poison into the outer layer of the epidermis, but it has been shown that this is not true, as they are completely harmless to the human skin tissue.
Although they reproduce sexually, they have the ability to reproduce also by budding. Budding is a method of vegetative multiplication that occurs in some invertebrate animals and in some plants, has the curious property of being able to regenerate complete individuals from a torn arm, for example, while the rest of the animal is capable of regenerate the lost arm. It does not bother them to voluntarily part with one of their members when they feel in danger.
There are gigantic starfish of up to twenty-two arms. There are orange, purple, red, green, pink yellow, blue and multicolored. There are a large number that are luminescent and glow in the dark. There are also smooth textures, although there are also bristles with spikes.
They are not good mothers; they scatter their eggs in the sea and do not worry more about what happens to their children, which are transported by the currents by the millions, and serve as food for many fish and other sea animals.