Each Eimer’s organ is supplied by a number of primary afferents, thus the star is densely innervated. It is associated with a Merkel cell-neurite complex at the base of the cell column, a lamellated corpuscle in the dermis just below the column and a series of free nerve endings that originate from myelinated fibers in the dermis, run through the central column and end in a ring of terminal swellings just below the outer keratinized skin surface. All 25,000 Eimer’s organs distributed along the surface of the star have this basic structure in all 22 appendages. Nevertheless, the fovea region (11th pair of rays), which is shorter in area, has a lower density of these organs – 900 Eimer's organs on its surface while some of the lateral rays have over 1500. This may sound contradictory with the fact that this region has higher resolution and an important role in foraging behavior. However, instead of having more sensory organs this fovea region uses a different approach in which a skin surface may be more sensitive to mechanoreceptic input; it has more innervation density. Rays 1 through 9 each has about 4 fibers per Eimer's organ, while rays 10 and 11 have significantly higher innervation densities of 5.6 and 7.1 fibers per organ, respectively, revealing how the sensory periphery is differentially specialized across the star.