Shocked! The prototype of "Patrick Star" is so indescribable!

When it comes to stars, you may first think of Patrick the Starfish , which crawls silently on the seabed and occasionally runs aground on the beach, feeling the ebb and flow of the tide with its primitive body, and gazing at the vicissitudes of this blue planet. Starfish are widely distributed in the oceans of the world. They are of various types and shapes. Today's starfish is even more unrestrained and unrestrained. It is Choriaster granulatus .

The unique starfish | hatena.ne.jp

Oh my god, look at that indescribable wrist

Like all other starfish, the granulosa starfish is an echinoderm , belonging to the family Oreasteridae, order Valvatida, class Asteroidea. It can be seen in the Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Red Sea. It usually lives in shallow coral reef waters in tropical waters. Its body diameter can reach about 20 cm, making it a medium-to-large starfish.

Granulosa starfish | curiousokinawa.com

The surface of the granulosa starfish is smooth, without warts or spines. The slightly raised gills with fine granules are used for breathing and excretion, which is also the origin of its Chinese name. The body of the granulosa starfish is composed of a central body disk and five radiating arms. The body is thick and plump, like a comfortable pillow and a piece of soft dough, so it has the English nicknames "cushion seastar" and "doughboy star".

Dark leather gills with fine grains | fineartamerica.com

The five indescribable arms of the granulosa starfish are the essence of its appearance, as you can see. Its arms are short and thick, with the last quarter not covered by gills, rounded at the top, and the central ambulatory groove on the ventral surface extending upward. From a human perspective, the grandeur of these five arms is like a battle of five armies, which makes people imagine, so it has the Japanese common name "Five Times a Night" (wrong), and as for the nicknames "Gu Juji" and "Takeshi Kaneshiro" that people call it, I don't seem to know what they are talking about as I don't chase stars.

Those five indescribable wrists | basdiving.com

The Creator has a great sense of humor... | Daniel / wordpress.com

The prototype of Patrick Star in the American cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants" is very likely to come from the granuloma starfish. The fat pink starfish in the show is always inseparable from SpongeBob. It is a big-headed starfish with strong limbs, often causing trouble for everyone. It is a loyal fan of the Krusty Krab and SpongeBob's best friend. Woohoo, it seems that I finally know why SpongeBob has so many holes on his body......

SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick | SpongeBob SquarePants

The Silent Hunter of the Sea

The starfish rests quietly on the seafloor, and its silent appearance is quite different from its usual image as a greedy carnivore in the ocean. Like most starfish, the calcareous bone plates of the granulosa starfish are relatively hard, and its wrist can only bend slowly, so its movement mainly depends on the "water pipe system".

The tube feet of a granulomatous sea star | curiousokinawa.com

There is a groove in the middle of the ventral surface of their arms, which usually have several rows of small tube feet with suction cups. The tube feet are soft and elastic, and can swing back and forth and grasp objects. There is a finger-like sac at the base, which is filled with fluid and connected to the whole body to form a water pipe system. In short, starfish can control the local contraction of muscles through the nervous system, thereby supporting and moving the body through these "hydraulic small tube feet" . The arms of starfish are radial, so there is no front and back of the body. Any arm can act as a pioneer and move in any direction at any time, and can move at least 5 to 10 centimeters per minute.

The well-developed water pipe system of the starfish | curiousokinawa.com

Granulosa starfish usually feed on mollusks, coelenterates and corals. When hunting, they use the sense of touch and smell of their tube feet to find prey. After finding the prey, they will hold the prey tightly with their thick arms, or tear the shell of the prey apart with the help of the tube foot sucker, and then spit out the cardiac stomach from the mouth to wrap the prey's flesh and begin digestion and absorption. Sometimes they can even push the stomach into the gap between the tightly closed shells of shellfish . This amazing skill allows starfish to catch prey much larger than themselves.

Hold tight | wetwebmedia.com

The big conch is coming, run!

The granulomatous sea star will encounter many natural enemies in its life, such as seabirds, sea otters, etc., and of course there is also a big enemy from the bottom of the sea, which is the famous conch (Charonia tritonis).

C. tritonis | wikipedia

It is a giant sea snail with a shell that can grow up to nearly 60 centimeters. It is one of the largest mollusks in the coral reef area, and its favorite food is starfish. Like most starfish, when it encounters a natural enemy, it will break away from the grasping arm in a critical moment , but its arm has a strong regenerative ability and will soon grow a new one.

Conch eating starfish | norbertwu.com

The conch also preys on the crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci). Compared with the granuloma starfish, the crown-of-thorns starfish is a big enemy of coral reefs. They can crawl firmly on the coral, turn their stomachs inside out and cover the coral, and secrete a large amount of digestive fluid to penetrate into the pores of the coral's calcareous skeleton, turning the delicate coral polyps into a nutritious "delicious meal". **Each crown-of-thorns starfish eats about 15 square meters of coral tissue every year. **The crown-of-thorns starfish is covered with poisonous spines, and the conch is almost its only natural enemy.

Granulosa starfish on a coral reef | casc.it

Crown-of-thorns starfish feeding on coral | Michele Westmorland/ Animals Animals

Unfortunately, in many countries today, conchs are still traded as beautiful ornaments. Humans have been catching large numbers of conchs, which has reduced the number of natural enemies of crown-of-thorns starfish; coupled with overfishing of fishery resources, the number of fish that prey on crown-of-thorns starfish larvae has decreased. Crown-of-thorns starfish have a very strong reproductive capacity, laying more than 100,000 eggs at a time, and they can mature and reproduce in less than two years. The surge in crown-of-thorns starfish will bring serious disasters to coral reefs, like a coral plague .

Freshly caught conch | natgeocreative.com

SpongeBob’s best friend is Patrick , and the species calendar also wants a star from his best friends🌟

Author: Fish of Salzburg

Cover image source: wetwebmedia.com

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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