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A starfish can grow a new arm

Imagine that you fell and scraped your knee - in a week the wound would heal. Now imagine that you lost your entire arm, and a year later a new one grew back. Sounds like fantasy? This is a common occurrence among starfish!

A starfish has five (and sometimes up to forty!) rays. And if a predator, say a crab or fish, bites off one, the star will not die. It will simply start growing a new ray. This takes from several months to a year. And even more amazing: in some species, even a single torn ray can grow a whole new star! One ray — and again a full-fledged animal with a mouth, stomach, and legs.

By the way, a starfish has no brain and no blood. Instead of blood, its body circulates… seawater! And under each ray there are hundreds of tiny sucker-like legs, with which the star slowly crawls along the bottom — about 15 centimeters per minute.

Starfish eat in a very unusual way. When they find a shell, they wrap their rays around it, slowly open it, and push their stomach out, right into the shell. Yes, the stomach comes out through the mouth! It digests the prey, and then goes back in. Imagine if you ate ice cream this way!

Starfish have been living in the oceans for over 450 million years—which means they've seen dinosaurs on Earth before. Small, quiet, brainless—and yet so resilient.