Visit our Interactive Rockpool and gently touch a live sea star!
These creatures are really neat! The starfish belongs to the phylum of echinoderms; they are cousins of sea urchins and inhabit each oceans around the world.
Most starfish have five limbs, but this is not the case for all: some species can have up to 50 well-developed arms and others have limbs so short as to seem pads. Starfish have a significant regenerative capacity: if they lose a limb, in fact, they are able to grow another one just like it.
Starfish spend the day in search of food, and their favorite prey are sea urchins and mussels. Starfish have the ability to open the shells of mussels due to the strength of their arms, and they evert their stomachs from their mouths so as to digest mollusks externally.