Re: Do star fish lay eggs or do they just have the baby star fish?

Greetings,

Simply put, when mating season comes all the female starfish send off eggs. The male senses that there are eggs in the neighborhood and he in turn sends off sperm. The eggs and the sperm then join together and make a baby starfish.

The family name of the starfish is Echinoderm, which means "spiney skinned". It has a mouth in the middle of it's body and eyes on the end of it's legs. To walk it has small tubes like sticky pads which help it walk up rocks or along sand.

Here are some interesting facts about the starfish:

• The Starfish can actually pull open a shell!
• If it finds a mussel or other mollusc it pulls open the shell and eats the inside, they do the same with shell fish and scallops.
• The Starfish may have up to 3000 members within one area.
• If a Starfish looses four of it's five legs it can grow them all back.
• The starfish eats mostly molluscs but it eats sponges, corals and even seaworms!
• If a mussel or clam that a Starfish eats is sick or dead the starfish may die and it's very lucky if it lives.
• The Starfish live mainly on the bottom of the sea but it also lives in small holes left by other creatures in rocks and coral reefs. The second main place to find Starfish is on coral because the starfish nearly always eats it!
• If a Star fish finds a piece of food, such as a mussel, it releases signals that it found food. Soon, all the Starfish that got the message come and start fighting over the food, like a flock of seagulls with a fish.

I hope that your question has been sufficiently answered, I would like to thank the following sites for the information they provided on starfish.

http://www.beavton.k12.or.us/vose/kidopedia/starfish.html

http://home.mira.net/~areadman/seastars.htm

June Wingert
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas