If you visit the Georgia coast, you might see a Forbes’ sea star on the beach or in a tide pool. This five-armed echinoderm has hundreds of suckered tube feet on the underside of each arm for gripping rocks and prey. Have you ever seen a sea star eat! This animal will pry a mussel or clam open, slide its stomach inside where it liquefies and absorbs the soft tissue of the bivalve, then releases its grip and drifts with the tide in search of another mollusk meal. During their journey, a sea star might lose an arm. This is all right, as the animal has the ability to regenerate its lost limb. They grow new arms to replace the lost ones and sometimes even grew extras. Not bad for a simple organism with no brain!

Don’t miss the Georgia Explorer gallery where you can have a “Sense-Sational” encounter at our sea star touch pool and discover this incredible aquatic animal.

• The Forbes’ sea star is a carnivore that feeds chiefly on bivalve mollusks in
• When preying on an oyster or clam, the sea star grips the bivalve’s shell and applies strong pressure to force it open. By creating even a tiny gap, the sea star can squeeze its stomach inside the shell and digest the soft body tissue.
• It is probably the most common sea star along the coast of the southeastern U.S.
• When a sea star loses or damages an arm, it sheds the appendage at a point close to the center of its body and the cut skin begins to heal over. It then will regenerate a new limb. Sometimes a sea star will overcompensate and grow more than one replacement limb.

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