Two feet? Meh. 15,000 tube feet? Now we’re talking. 🌟🦶 Tube feet are small suctioning tubes that echinoderms like sea stars and urchins use to cling onto surfaces, move, eat, and breathe. Sunflower sea stars—including the ones shown here at the Academy—have an absurd amount of these tubes clustered under their arms, earning them their genus name ‘Pycnopodia’ (“many feet” in Latin). Tube feet are also the reason sunflower stars can race across ocean floors at speeds of up to a meter per minute,
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Two feet? Meh. 15,000 tube feet? Now we’re talking. 🌟🦶 Tube feet are small suctioning tubes that echinoderms like sea stars and urchins use to cling onto surfaces, move, eat, and breathe. Sunflower sea stars—including the ones shown here at the Academy—have an absurd amount of these tubes clustered under their arms, earning them their genus name ‘Pycnopodia’ (“many feet” in Latin). Tube feet are also the reason sunflower stars can race across ocean floors at speeds of up to a meter per minute,
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