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There are two ways a starfish can lose its limbs from predators. The loss of limbs includes losing an entire limb or multiple from large prey, or flesh being eaten away by smaller prey. Large prey can eat the starfish whole, whereas smaller prey will turn over a starfish and eat at their soft flesh. [32]
Asexual reproduction in starfish takes place by fission or through autotomy of arms. In fission, the central disc breaks into two pieces and each portion then regenerates the missing parts. In autotomy, an arm is shed with part of the central disc attached, which continues to live independently as a "comet", eventually growing a new set of arms.
A white-headed dwarf gecko with tail lost due to autotomy. Autotomy (from the Greek auto-, "self-" and tome, "severing", αὐτοτομία) or 'self-amputation', is the behaviour whereby an animal sheds or discards an appendage, [1] usually as a self-defense mechanism to elude a predator's grasp or to distract the predator and thereby allow escape.
A starfish has five identical arms with a layer of “tube feet” beneath them that can help the marine creature move along the seafloor, causing naturalists to puzzle over whether sea stars have ...
For decades, scientists theorized a starfish didn’t have heads. A new study finds that they might, in fact, only have heads. A Study Says Starfish Are Basically Walking Heads, and Literally ...
When L. clathrata loses part or all of an arm through predation, it can regenerate the limb.The damaged area is sealed off, and a new small arm-tip appears within a week. Subsequent development is at the rate of about 3.7 mm (0.15 in) a month, although this slows down when regeneration is nearly complete.
Nowadays, you don't have to take a trip to the local library if you want to go on a fact-finding mission. You don't have to read a whole book, magazine, or even an Encyclopaeda Brittanica to learn ...
Starfish do not appear to have any mechanisms for osmoregulation, and keep their body fluids at the same salt concentration as the surrounding water. Although some species can tolerate relatively low salinity , the lack of an osmoregulation system probably explains why starfish are not found in fresh water or even in many estuarine environments.