How Does it Move and Get Food?
all echinoderms have tube feet. These feet have suction disks that enable the animals to crawl or attach themselves to objects. taken from: http://www.answers.com/Q/How_do_echinoderms_move
Starfish are carnivores and scavengers. They feed on all sorts of other invertebrates, particularly bivalves, snails, crustaceans, marine worms, other echinoderms and even fish. They are attracted to the bodies of dead animals on the sea floor. Some are very specific in their eating habits and will only eat sea cucumbers for instance, others are more adaptable and will eat a wide variety of prey. taken from: http://www.darwinsgalapagos.com/animals/echinodermata_echinoderms.htm The Echinoderms are a pretty diverse Phylum, including sea stars (aka starfish), crinoids, sea cucumbers and sea urchins - each of which have very different feeding habits and methods of obtaining their food. Many sea stars are predators, feeding on molluscs like clams by prying apart their shells and actually everting their stomach inside the shell to digest the meat. Crinoids are filter feeders, using their long arms to capture food particles wafting past in the currents. Sea urchins have powerful grinding mouthparts that allow them to chew apart rock-hard coral, or scrape algae and kelp from the rocks. There's no one food or technique that's shared by all Echinoderms. taken from: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080826053445AAb1yMo What makes them so special? Can you say that you have tube feet? They can. If you ever turn a starfish over you will see hundreds of little tubes on each arm. Those tubes attach to an object, suck in, and attach to help the creature move. Those tube feet are also quite handy when it's time to eat. Starfish are hunters, moving around the rocks looking for food. Sometimes they come across a bivalve (mussel or clam). The starfish doesn't want to eat the shell. It wants to eat the organism inside. They use those little tubes to attach to the shell. Since the suction is so strong, that can slowly open the bivalve and eat soft part of the mussel inside. taken from: http://www.biology4kids.com/files/invert_starfishurchin.html |
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