Starfish might have the coolest—and strangest—way of gobbling up a snack.
I learned all about it from my friend Cori Kane. She studied coral reefs when she was a Ph.D. student in biological sciences at Washington State University. Now she works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She writes policies to help protect the ocean and the animals that live there.
“Sea stars are probably one of the weirdest creatures. I don’t know any other organism that basically barfs out its stomach to eat,” Kane said.
Yes, you heard that right. She said sea stars barf out their stomachs.
“They have stomachs sort of similar to ours,” she said. “But instead of ingesting food through the mouth and going to the stomach, they basically spit out their stomach through their mouth. Then the stomach wraps around the food and digests the food outside of its body. Once all the food is digested, it pulls in the stomach and swallows it back into its body again.”
Wow. That’s a lot to digest.