Posted Thursday, June 18, 2009, at 2:44 PM It roams the ocean
floor, always ravenous, always ready to kill. When it finds its
prey, it pulls it apart with hideous strength and then eats it
while the prey is still alive. What is this fearsome beast? Is
it a shark? A kraken? The Loch Ness Monster? Nope. It's a
starfish. The most common starfish species on both the East and
West coasts, beloved by millions of beach-going children, are
actually mighty predators. Starfish aren't actually fish-
starfish are invertebrates with no skeleton and no central
nervous system. (For that reason many people prefer to call them
"sea stars," but I'll just stick with starfish here.) Like sea
cucumbers and sea urchins, sea stars are echinoderms ,
invertebrates with spiny bodies and little suction cups called
"tube feet." In starfish, tube feet line their underside ,
acting like tiny legs that glide the starfish slowly over the
ocean floor. The tube feet also act like tongues, licking the
bottom to sense where something tasty might