Common Basket Star

• Its arms divide dichotomously dozens of times, adding up to several thousand tips, and form the most elaborate capture net of any echinoderm.
• It climbs to the high points of the seabed, such as sea fans, to expose its net to the strongest current.
• At dawn it draws in the net and coils into a compact ball, barely recognisable as the same animal.
• Its five arms branch again and again until they form a tangle of thousands of branchlets, which is where its name of Gorgon's head comes from, after the snakes in Medusa's hair.
• With that net spread against the current it filters plankton: it is not a hunting starfish but a living trap.
• Each branchlet can coil on its own around a captured prey item and carry it towards the mouth, at the centre of the disc.
• It positions itself on top of gorgonians and sponges to make better use of the current, which is why it is often photographed perched on a coral.
• By day, in shallow water, it draws its arms in to form a compact ball and unfurls them at dusk.
• It is slow-growing and probably long-lived, although its age is difficult to determine.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - endoskeleton of calcareous plates (echinoderm)

Habitat & environment

Rocky bottoms and cold corals of the Arctic and the North Atlantic and Pacific, from 15 to 1,500 m

Sources consulted: Emson y Woodley, trabajos sobre alimentación en Gorgonocephalus; Marine Life Information Network; Instituto de Investigación Marina de Noruega