Battles, bouts and jousting: The life and times of Carpet Sea Stars

Sea Stars move. I know this seems pretty obvious but have you ever sat and watched a Sea Star and just waited to see what it does? You can wait and wait and wait. They spend a fair whack of time just, well, being Sea Stars I guess. I tend to see them animating right as low tide starts to turn. Now THAT’S when you want to be face down peering into rock pools!

I had forgotten how much I love watching Sea Stars! And Carpet Sea Stars are one of my favourites; the hard body plates weaving together colours and patterns similar to those of a Turkish rug. Just beautiful. We hadn’t planned to explore today but once we noticed how beautiful it was outside and how icy cold and dark our little tree-bordered cottage was, we grabbed the half charged camera and headed to our favourite rock platform.

Let me tell you, trying to capture time-lapse video of barely moving animals when you don’t know exactly when they will do something, anything, without a full charge makes for a bit of a stressful filming experience. You know what else is stressful? Sticking your hand into a rock pool to position said camera and having a very unexpected Octopus tentacle unfurl from underneath a ledge and latch onto the camera and engage in a tug of war with you! Note to self: don’t skip arm day, those critters are strong (and they have more arms than you)! 🤣

But I got super lucky and even after filming a couple of stars sitting and doing sweet FA for about 45 minutes, I not only had enough battery left to quickly catch them as they began to engage in a ‘battle’ but they were also faster than usual in their interaction and so I was able to also capture (some of) their bout in real time. Full disclosure: I stopped to stretch at one point and then ran into a friend and quickly pushed the phone into Matt’s hand instructing him to keep filming but without actually pressing record and well, he realised a couple of minutes later and captured them moving apart. Still, I call that ‘better than nothing’ 😉

Watch the time-lapse and real time action below

I see this behaviour fairly regularly. Two or sometimes three Sea Stars move towards each other (they have crude eyes on the end of their arms or ‘rays’ so they can sense light and dark and some species can even see shapes!). They may lift an arm or two up and touch the other animal and will often then grab at each other, intertwining their limbs and lifting up and ‘jousting’, pushing at each other until one star ‘wins’ the bout and then they separate! You can read more here: http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/starfish-fighting-behavior-revealed.html

Like many good battles, it seems that this behaviour is often over food and trust me, as someone who just had to pull out a step stool and reach deep into the pantry to find Matt’s ‘secret’ peanut stash, I feel this in my soul! 🤣

Carpet Sea Stars – Sandon Point