What animal has to throw up its stomach before it eats?

Starfish are some of the most beautiful creatures in the sea. But did you know that they’re actually deadly predators?

Starfish, or sea stars, are really interesting animals. Their “skeleton” is made of water! The sea star has a series of branching tubes running down each arm of its body. Each one of these tubes branches into hundreds of tiny “tube feet” that stick out through holes on the undersides of its arms. By controlling the amount of water in these tubes, the sea star can move them around and use them to travel from one place to another!

A sea star has a tiny mouth on the underside of it’s body, right in the centre where its arms meet. If it could only eat things smaller than its mouth, it would be reduced to eating food no bigger than a pea! Fortunately, sea stars have a much more effective way of eating. When they come upon prey that can’t move fast enough to escape, such as sea urchins or clams, the sea star folds its arms around its prey and then sticks its stomach out through its mouth and turns it inside out! When the stomach touches the sea star’s prey, the strong digestive juices dissolve the prey until the starfish can slurp it up.

If a prey is really tough to eat, like an oyster, the sea star uses its tube feet to pry the shell open and then jams its inside-out stomach inside the shell to dissolve the soft body inside!