Bat star Bat star The bat star ("Patiria miniata"), also known as a sea bat, webbed star, and broad-disk star, is a species of sea star (also called a starfish) in the family Asterinidae. It typically has five arms, with the center disk of the animal being much wider than the stubby arms are in length. Although the bat star usually has five arms, it sometimes has as many as nine. Bat stars occur in many of colors, including green, purple, red, orange, yellow and brown, either mottled or solid. The bat star gets its name from the webbing between its arms,
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