Common starfish Common starfish The common starfish or common sea star ("Asterias rubens") is the most common and familiar starfish in the north-east Atlantic. Belonging to the family Asteriidae, it has five arms and usually grows to between 10–30 cm across, although larger specimens (up to 52 cm across) are known. The common starfish is usually orange or brown, and sometimes violet; deep-water specimens are pale. The common starfish is to be found on rocky and gravelly substrates where it feeds on molluscs and other benthic invertebrates. The common starfish normally has five arms, broad at their base and gradually tapering to
Starfish incapable of much differentiation and understanding the regrowth, repair and cloning processes in starfish may have implications for human medicine. Starfish also have an unusual ability to expel foreign objects from their bodies, which makes them difficult to tag for research tracking purposes. An aboriginal Australian fable retold by the Welsh school headmaster William Jenkyn Thomas (1870–1959) tells how some animals needed a canoe to cross the ocean. Whale had one but refused to lend it, so Starfish kept him busy, telling him stories and grooming him to remove parasites, while the others stole the canoe. When Whale realized the