Much to our readers’ dismay, I never tire of finding sea stars who buck the pentaradial symmetry trend and sport unusual numbers of legs, or little stumps where their legs are growing back. Tony took the picture above at Long Beach just after he came to Cape Town in late 2009 – this is an example (for which I’ve been searching for ages) of a sea star that has grown back more legs than it requires.
A recent dive at A Frame yielded some fantastic specimens. I particularly like the one above, who is bravely regrowing not one but two out of five legs. That’s awesome! The next two are simply enjoying life with four legs – where would you put the additional one?
I recently discovered that the time scales for regrowing limbs are quite long – up to a year to grow a leg back from nothing. Some sea stars will drop limbs (much like a gecko shedding its tail) when threatened or distressed; I’ve never seen this happen (and believe me, some Open Water students’ finning techniques would stress out a container ship…) so I’m not sure if it’s a feature of any of the sea stars we find around the Cape coast.
Finally, in keeping with the Frankenstein theme, here’s a spiny sea star I met on the SS Clan Stuart. He doesn’t have anything wrong with him, but I was profoundly amused by the way in which he seems to be wielding his limb like a zombie weapon. Stand clear, he could slap that thing down at any time!
