Last night I found this..
As a caveat-this video could have been staged, obivously some time lapse was used, not sure. but it IS pretty cool and is I think the first time I have EVER seen Urasterias alive in a video! So, enjoy!
here's some better pics of the animal itself I found on Flickr
Photo by Alexander Semenov
And a close up of the MANY pedicellariae. They are quite abundant and pretty frakking HUGE!
Photo by Alexander Semenov
If you want to why/how the pedicellariae might be used in feeding click first on this intro post and then there's this earlier post about asteroids feeding on moving prey! (and on Labidiaster-the king of starfish predators on moving prey!)
I've spoken recently of how the diving community and the many, many legions of marine photographers have captured SO much on the Internet-often without realizing what they've done! And here is another GREAT example!
2 comments:
This is awesome. Has anybody else observed similar phenomenon with genus Pisaster?
Pisaster ochraceus lives in a very different setting (the turbulent intertidal) than Urasterias and feeds mostly on mollusks-especially mussels.
P. bevispinus is mostly a soft-bottom feeder going after infaunal clams and so forth
P. giganteus is more of a generalist but there's been no evidence that it feeds like this. IF indeed that is what Urasterias is doing. We shall see...
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