On an extended research visit to a friend’s lab in Tokyo, marine biologists Amy Johnson and Olaf Ellers witnessed something they’d never seen before. The starfish in Tatsuo Motokawa’s lab weren’t ...

There are a lot of things you take for granted when you have a head. One of those is the direction that you walk in. But what if you had no head? Surprisingly, no scientist had ever thought to ...

A typical starfish has five-sided symmetry. With no clear head, the starfish can move in any direction, led by any one of its five arms. If you were feeling particularly cruel, you could fold one up ...

Stars twinkle overhead, but under the sea, stars huddle together. Sea stars, that is! Sea stars (Asteroidea), commonly known as starfish, are invertebrates called echinoderms — creatures with hard, ...

Robots are used for all sorts of different tasks including exploring areas where it is too hazardous for humans to venture due to war or disaster. The problem with many of the robot designs is that ...

Jaymi Heimbuch is a writer and photographer specializing in wildlife conservation, technology, and food. She is the author of "The Ethiopian Wolf: Hope at the Edge of Extinction." Starfish. Also known ...

For many creatures, having a limb caught in a predator’s mouth is usually a death sentence. Not starfish, though—they can detach the limb and leave the predator something to chew on while they crawl ...

Of the reefs surveyed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science this year, 29% have Crown of Thorns outbreaks, three times the level recorded in 1988 when they caused widespread destruction. WWF ...

Some killer robots are a good thing. While our planet experiences what many scientists are referring to as the 6th Mass Extinction, certain species are actually doing too well. As climates change and ...