Sunflower Sea Star — printable fact sheet
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Sunflower Sea Star
Pycnopodia helianthoides
The sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) is one of the largest sea stars in the world, spanning up to a metre across, and one of the fastest, moving over a metre a minute on as many as 15,000 tube feet. It is not born with its full complement of arms: juveniles start wi…
Did you know?
- The Sunflower Sea Star can have up to 24 arms, making it one of the sea stars with the most appendages in the world.
- It adds arms as it grows, going from five as a juvenile to as many as 24 as an adult. It can outrun most sea stars, covering more than a metre a minute on thousands of tube feet. Its collapse from wasting disease, some five billion animals in a few years, triggered an urchin population explosion that destroyed most of northern California's bull kelp forest. Its arms are so soft that a stressed animal can literally tear itself apart, which is what the disease exploits.
What I learned
Draw the sunflower sea star
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