ASTEROIDEA 



55 



search of food. The starfish, by cHnging with its sucking disks, 

 can travel along horizontal or vertical walls It can bend its 

 arms or even its central disk, when necessary, to pass through 

 openings or crevices between rocks. As it moves so slowly, its 

 direct dispersal is very limited, but since it is not attached, it is 

 indirectly distributed by the tides and currents. The exceed- 

 ingly minute young are often borne great distances in this way. 

 Foods and Feeding. — The starfish is carnivorous and very 

 voracious; indeed, it seems to eat continuously. It feeds upon 

 barnacles, clams, oysters (Fig. 42), and, it is said, even small 

 fishes, or, failing of these, it will eat the garbage thrown along the 

 shore, thus acting as a sort of scavenger. The worst damage it 



Fig. 42. — Starfish attacking oysters. (From Fifth Report of Connecticut 

 Bureau of Labor Statistics.) 



does by its gluttony is to the oyster-beds. Oysters and clams 

 close their shells to the starfish, but it keeps up a stea:dy ])ull un- 

 til it gets them open, when it reaches its arms about its prey and 

 extrudes the lower part of its stomach, envelops the soft parts, 

 pours out the digestive fluids about them and absorbs them, 

 then withdraws its stomach, leaving the indigestible parts of its 

 victim outside the l^ody. Further digestion of the absorbed food 

 takes place in the pyloric portion of the stomach, aided by the 

 secretions of the hepatic cseca. The fact that all indigestible 

 parts are '' rejected " may account for the shortness of the in- 

 testine, and certainly does account for the small or lacking anal 

 aperture, since there is little left to be " ejected." 



