Crown-of-thorns starfish substrates with their arms and, when offered a choice of substrates, tend to settle on coralline algae, which they will subsequently feed on. In the classic pattern for echinoderms, the bilaterally symmetrical larva is replaced by a pentamerously symmetrical stage at metamorphosis, with the latter's body axis bearing no relationship to that of the larva. Thus the newly metamorphosed starfish are five-armed and are 0.4–1 mm diameter. (Note the size of the tube feet relative to the size of the animal.) They feed on the thin coating layers of hard encrusting algae (coralline algae) on the undersides of dead coral
Starfish up." In the Nickelodeon animated television series "SpongeBob SquarePants", the eponymous character's best friend is a dim-witted starfish, Patrick Star. Starfish are widespread in the oceans, but are only occasionally used as food. There may be good reason for this: the bodies of numerous species are dominated by bony ossicles, and the body wall of many species contains saponins, which have an unpleasant taste, and others contain tetrodotoxins which are poisonous. Some species that prey on bivalve molluscs can transmit paralytic shellfish poisoning. Georg Eberhard Rumpf found few starfish being used for food in the Indonesian archipelago, other than as