For divers in tropical waters feather stars are a common sight. Almost all around the world feather stars bring colour to the under water environment. Despite its nice colours divers normaly do not pay too much attention to these animals. We are more likely to pay attention to all the fish around us; search for the bog animals and leave the feather stars on its own. We think of it as less interesting animals. But this means that we will miss a number of surprising meetings.

Feather stars realy give colour to the under water environment. In tropical water you will encounter them in all kinds of colours. From dull black or brown coloured to beautiful yellow or warm red coloured. And all variations inbetween are possible. And as soon as you think you have seen all the colours you will find an example who combines colours for example black combined with yellow or white. Please take a moment to examine the colour patterns of this bicoloured feather stars; you will be surprised by the different patterns.

Despite all the different colours feather stars all have the same construction. The central body is formed like a cup. At the bottom of the central body the feather star has a number of very thin legs, named the cirri. With these cirri or legs the feather stars can get a hold on the reef. Their favorite spots are on top of rocks or large spunges.

On top of the body the featherstar has a number of long arms. Some feather stars look rather poor with only five arms; whereas there are also featherstars with more than 200 arms. But for all featherstars it counts that they each have a base of five arms. From there the arms divide further into more arms. If you should accidentally touch the arms of the featherstar you will feel that these arms are extremely sticky. This sticky substance helps the featherstar with catching its food. Featherstars will undertake nearly no activities to find himself some food. The only thing they do is position themselves at a good spot on the reef, preferably in a bit of current. Thanks to the current nutricious water flows by. And thanks to the sticky substance on its arms the food will become stuck in the arms quite easily. Afterwards the only thing to do is bring the food to its mouth.