Starfish are Echinoderms
In response to his Grandmother's questions about starfish, Boy has prepared the following interesting facts about starfish:
* Sea Stars, Sea urchins, Sea Cucumbers and Crinoids (feathering looking creatures with many more than 5 arms) are called Echinoderms (scientific name).
* Sea stars (starfish) don’t send their food to their stomachs. They send their stomachs to their food. Their insides come out and cover over their food to digest it.
* Starfish come in all sorts of bright and pale colours: red, blue, yellow, orange and pink. Some starfish are just the one colour and some have spots and blobs of different colours.
* If a starfish gets a broken arm, its arm will grow back. The broken off piece of arm can also grow into a starfish.
* Starfish are known as the vacuum cleaners of the ocean. They live on the bottom of the ocean floor and vacuum it clean. Many starfish means a good clean carpet. I asked the man at the Aquarium if I could have two to keep in my bedroom.
* A Starfish mouth is on their under belly and they have an eye on the end of each of their fingers.
* Sea Cucumbers are cool. If you cut a Sea Cucumber in halves, you would see the shape of a star. Some people eat Sea Cucumbers. In Asia the people love them.
* Sea Cucumbers filter the food from the sand. They suck sand and food in one end and they squirt clean sand out the other.
