Room One Superstars!

  Starfish

Do you know what an Asteroid is? 

It is the scientific name for a starfish. Starfish are marine animals, which live in salty waters, they have many different names such as a sea star an asteroid a starfish and an Echinoderm.  

APPEARANCE

Starfish can be from five to forty arms they aren’t all the same because Echinoderms can be any colour of the rainbow. If sea stars get hurt or loose an arm in a few weeks it will grow back, they can do it because they are regeneration that means a formation of a new organ or a lost part. Starfish do not have any eyes, but do have an eye spot on the end of each arm, eye spots are heaps of tiny cells that have formed together and made an eye spot, star fish are able to see if it is light or dark but can’t see shapes clearly.

DIET

Echinoderms are deadly predators to sea urchins, oysters, sea snails and mussels. Starfish are scavengers. Their predators are sharks the sun and sea birds. Sea stars mouths are a little bit down from the middle of them. They also have two stomachs and sea stars aren’t are not picky eaters.

HABITAT

Echinoderms are marine animals that live in salty waters and in tide pools, were the splash zone enters. If you turn a sea star over you will sea the fifteen thousand feet also known as suction pads, attached to the bottom of them, so they can cement themselves onto to hard rocks.

FACTS

Even though starfish are called starfish they are not a fish because they do NOT have fins, scales

or gills, because they do not have gills have you ever wondered how they breath, well starfish have breathing holes at the end of each arm, and they also have breathing tubes although their bodies.

Starfish are in the Phylum Echinodermata family, so that means they are related to the sand dollars.

Author: Lydia Gordon