Catch Of The Day: Creature With 1,000 Arms

Is that an alien? Because it definitely can’t be anything from our planet, right?!

WRONG!

During the last few days of September, Ong Han Boon was relaxing, fishing, and sipping on a few cold ones just off the coast of the Island of Sentosa, Singapore. Something he did often.

But what he pulled up from the depths of the ocean was completely out of the ordinary!

When he saw the creature on the end of his line he “was completely flummoxed by what [he] was looking at.” He’d been fishing thousands of times and seen some odd things come out of the ocean but never had he seen something quite like this creature. It slightly resembled a starfish but with many more arms twisting about.

He posted the above video to the internet and asked his friends to see if anyone could give him an explanation for the animal he caught. What he found out was amazing!

Ong Han Boon had caught a basket star. A basket star is in the same family as starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, and other sea creatures that grow symmetrically.

They generally live about 2000 meters below the surface (1.2 miles) so it’s incredibly rare that the fishermen caught one. Basket stars begin with five legs and overtime many more appendages sprout out of the existing arms. They use these appendages to collect food floating around them.

Below is a video of a basket star feeding at the Seattle Aquarium:

According to NOAA, the oceans cover about 71 percent of our planet and 95 percent of the ‘underwater universe’ is still unexplored!

It’s wild to think that we share our world with creatures that we may never even know exist! So what will we find next?

Source: nypost.com and iflscience.com