Talk:Starfish

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==Sea star vs starfish Beginning this page with "the talking sea star(more correctly known as sea stars as they are only very distantly related to fish)...", though literally true, inadvertently gives the impression that there actually is a closer relation between starfish and fish than there really is. Saying members of two different phyla are related at all is senseless unless you're referring to the relationship that all living things share in a common ancestry. They are probably less "related" to fish than we are to insects. I think I would mind it less if one were to say about seahorses that they are "only very distantly related to horses" because there's not chance for confusion. But in the layman's mind, often all "seafood" are some kind of fish. Why perpetuate the ignorance? I suggest changing this sentence to" "Starfish (more correctly known as sea stars as they are not related to fish)". PSF--207.59.160.2 13:58, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


This page was earlier at sea star, and claimed that starfish was an incorrect synonym. These things aren't fish, but that doesn't make the term incorrect as such - compare with jellyfish. Also, the terms differ slightly in scope - starfish is sometimes used to include brittle stars, and sea star isn't - but I guess this difference isn't quite so common as I thought. I think starfish is the more common term, so I've moved the page here, but even if it isn't, it shouldn't be called wrong. are sea stars vetebrates are invertebrates?because i have to do a school project and ur page dont tell me -love always- me!!!!!!!!!!!

Well if you go to an aquarium they're careful to call them seastars" and "jellies". We should at the very least note in the article that they're not fish. -- Loren


To those who defend the name seastar and protest, "but they aren't fish!": recall that neither are they stars. We are complicit in misnomer.

Along with this, jellyfish are not only not fish, but they are not jelly either. Also, a koala bear isn't a bear.

They aren't astronomical stars, but they are geometric stars.

Marine biologists consider "starfish" a deprecated name. Of course, it is a common name, and therefore should *be in wikipedia, but redirected to "sea star", not the other way around. Using "sea star" consistently in the article would also be good. You can argue whether the deprecation is silly, but it is real. Let's make the official name "sea star" (assuming we don't want Asteroidea). It makes the biologists happier, and doesn't upset the average person too much. user:nereocystis 22 Nov, 2004.

"fish" used to refer to many creatures which live in the water, which is probably the source for starfish. This use of "fish" is uncommon today, and is another argument for preferring "sea star" over "starfish". From 1913 Webster:

A name loosely applied in popular usage to many animals of diverse characteristics, living in the water. "Starfish" may be more common then "sea star" and "seastar", according to a google search, but "sea star" should be used.

It seems that the comments on this page prefer "sea star". Would anyone seriously object to making this the standard? user:nereocystis 3 Dec 2004.

I expect to change "starfish" to "sea star" in one week, unless there is objection. Nereocystis 09:58, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Done. Now does anyone object to moving the article to 'sea star' and have 'starfish' redirect to 'sea star'? Nereocystis 01:02, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Google test: Sea star gets 11,900,000; starfish only gets 1,240,000. Tony Jin 04:26, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sea star gets 11 900 000 without quotation marks, but by the 600th entry or so there are pages that don't mention the two words together. "Sea star" gets 195 000, and "sea stars" gets 84 500, considerably less than "starfish".

However, sea star is still preferred among scientists as a common name. I should provide a reference on this, but I don't have it yet. That is why many of us prefer sea star. There are 143,000 seastar references in google.Nereocystis 23:51, 3 May 2005 (UTC)


Preferred among scientists? I love it when folks make up their own facts to bolster their argument. A search on PubMed reveals this not to be the case.

Contents

[edit] Sea star vs starfish revisited

Scientists are well within their rights to redefine scientfic terms as they see fit but for an encyclopaedia to try tell me (and millions of others, see Google) that a word is "wrong" and that I should use another, is ludicrous.

I would like to see this issue brought back up for discussion. The Oxford English Dictionary makes the point that it are not in the business of defining the language but recording it. Is wikipedia's role so different? I would like to suggest a rewriting. The redirect from starfish to sea star is disturbing in that it feels like one is being, figuratively speaking, slpped on the hand. I also find it odd that the page is spotted with both terms and that the Resources section seems to point to sites that primarily use either starfish or Asteroidea.

When did it become so important that common names be scientifically accurate? Why have starfish been singled out? Are we now expected to move on and rename other animals and plants? What about shellfish? Shouldn't we at least point out that sea stars are not stars? It seems odd that we're worried about what some marine biologists may think but not what astronomers (or mathematicians, if you wish to follow that ridiculous geometry argument) think. Sorry, bad joke. But isn't this whole issue a bit silly?

A minority have decided we shouldn't use a word any longer. Why? Are they scared that the younger generation are too stupid to understand biological differences? What would be the logical result if we followed this path? Are we to rid our language of simile and metaphor and generalisations? Do all common names have to be literal? Isn't it actually a nice experience telling a child (or even an adult) that a banana is not from a tree or that pandas are not bears or that killer whales are actually dolphins? We do so not to 'disabuse' them of their ignorance but for simply fun. Let us defeat this misguided attack on the language. 1bj05hua (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. Well it looks like someone wasn't using his noodle. When I wrote the above comments I had no idea that the name had only just been changed a matter of days before. What's more it was tagged as a minor edit. So it looks like I stumbled in here, looked a round, didn't notice the very recent change (to sea star) and assumed that there was some reasonable discussion to be had about fixing the page. Boy was I wrong. Not only was the first move marked up as a minor edit but then someone else comes by straight after my comments and changes it back, again as a minor edit. What is going on here?1bj05hua (talk) 20:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

This is nothing short of amazing to me and exactly the sort of thing that folks correctly (unfortunately) point to when decrying wikipedia. Were we to let majority rule, we might well give up on evolution, at least in some countries. This is a clear case where scientists use one term that differs from the vast majority of common use. So who decides? The folks who write invertebrate zoology and other scientific texts (who use 'seastar'), or those who write popular texts (and use 'starfish'). Is this a science article? Anyone in favor of siding with the scientists? So, as soon as I figure out how to do it I'll change it to seastar once and once only. Before you change it back please do me one favor: do a google 'book search' for each term, and stick with the one that yields the larger number of science texts. CheersDmccabe (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

OK; failed to do the move. I requested a move instead.Dmccabe (talk) 22:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Geological history

Added the ==Geological history== text from an article I originally in 1998 and published it on the Web....

Dlloyd 00:39, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Portions of this text are :

"Copyright © 1995-1997 The Fossil Company Ltd. © 1997-1999 The British Fossil Company Inc. and licensed by the owner under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." Please contact me if you need further clarification on this.

Dlloyd 00:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Is ITIS authoritative?

The ITIS, which I suppose is authoritative, classifies Asteroidea as a subclass of the class Stelleroidea, so I adjusted the taxonomy to reflect this. k.lee 03:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

ITIS isn't necessarily authoritative, so things shouldn't be changed to match it. In this particular case, it looks like it doesn't match the system used here and in various other places, since it either doesn't recognize the class Concentricycloidea or refers to it by a very different name. Accordingly, I'm reverting the change.

[edit] Sunstars?

No mention of sunstars, genus solaster. Phyllaplysia mention them in passing as a predator. Interesting since they violate the pentagonal symmetry ( or did I blink and miss a reclassification )--Shoka 21:28, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

A picture of a sunstar would be great, they are very beautiful animals. The picture could have an accompanying note about symmetry. However, I don't know where to get un-copyrighted animal pictures, so I'll just have to wait for someone else... Citizen Premier 13:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific name?

What is the scientific name they list it nowhere.

Class: Asteroidea--located in the box on the side! Citizen Premier 04:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

How about adding this image to the main article:


Looks like somebody did. I made it into a thumb so it wouldn't skew the page. Citizen Premier 06:37, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the sea stars and the fishers

I've heard the story a few times of the fishermen who, for some reason, felt that the native starfish were impeding on their harvest, and so they began a policy of cutting all the starfish they found into half and throwing them back in the sea. According to the tale, this effectively doubled the starfish population. Is this story based on actual events or just an allegory for when trying to abolish something actually makes it stronger? Citizen Premier 06:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Did some investigation on Google to attempt to clarify the section on reproduction. Came across reports of species under controlled conditions in aquarium actually losing about half an arm, by a process of autotomy with the original star surviving happily, and repeating the process, while the severed arms developed into further complete starfish. So at least some species actually use this as a method of asexual reproduction.
  • The reports you mention may or may not be allegory, its not at all clear that all stars can do this, but the ability to re form from severed parts is clearly within the capability of some species, and thus your tale is at least potentially based on reality.--Shoka 23:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] info for the taking

My old bio project on this topic is at User:Stellertony/Notepad/Sea_star; I don't know how much, if any, of it would be useful and I don't have time to delve through it all right now, but feel free to take anything out of it that would be useful for this page (or any other). Stellertony the Bookcrosser 09:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the offer. I'll look.--Shoka 23:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help wanted to identify image

Could anyone help by identifying the species shown in these images uploaded to Commons? William Avery 18:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Right way up
Right way up
Turned over
Turned over

It's Asterias amurensis, the echinoderm that notoriously invaded Australian waters (they are native of Northeastern Pacific, in the seas of Japan and Russia). Make sure that no one misidentify this species with other native Australian sea stars. For more information, click here: Asterias amurensis

Best Regards, Pentapod 16:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

edit: I found a Wikipedia article about this species, so you will be able to place the picture at the correct place by now. Here: Northern Pacific seastar

Thank you. I took a little while to get back to this! William Avery 13:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Preditors?

Superficially it seems like stars would make easy prey. What defense mechanisms do they have and who are their preditors?


[edit] Lifespan?

Any idea of average lifespan ?

well lets assume this shall we, it obivously can grow back arm so it cant die from getting old or brittle. it would seem that a starfish can live for between 20-50 years. depending on the surrondings and all that jazz!

[edit] Requested move

This article has been renamed from sea star to starfish as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 11:14, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Sea star → Starfish — this move was done about 1.5 years ago, without consulting WP:RM. The name "sea star" seems to be a new term in order to correct the fact that a starfish is not actually a fish; however, it's not nearly the most common term: google gets 6 mil. hits for starfish: [1], and sea star gets under 1 million: [2]. It seems, by the arguments used above, that this new term has been created by aquariums, who also don't use the term jellyfish (!) because it's etymologically wrong. We don't want to create our own terms, simply because a word is more etymologically correct; this is the argument currently being used to move homophobia to the horrid neologism misohomo. Patstuarttalk|edits 19:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

[edit] Survey - in support of the move

  1. Support as nom. Patstuarttalk|edits 21:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  2. Support. Come on this article is about starfish... It may not be an accurate name but it is the one most used. The entymological problems with the name can be discussed in the article, but using the most common name for something is clearly required by WP:NAME. WJBscribe -WJB talk- 19:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  3. Support per nom. Joie de Vivre 22:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  4. Support. These type of "concerted efforts" to change names because of perceived incorrectness can get ridicuclous. Yes, a starfish is may not be a fish but it's not a star either so the concerned parties had better look for a new name. If that's not persuasive enough, go look at Fish#What_is_a_fish.3F and you'll see that there's actually no such thing as a fish (or a zebra or Washington, D.C. or a sea or many other things that we assume exist nut don't but that still have Wikipedia articles) so calling it a starfish can't really be incorrect. When the name "sea star" actually attains predominant usage, then that title will be appropriate. —  AjaxSmack  09:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  5. Support per WP:COMMONNAME. --Kusunose
  6. Support --Yath 02:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  7. Support absolutely no basis for having it at this non-name at all. Lots of common words have component parts referring to other words that aren't correct. Sea lions aren't lions, sea horses aren't horses, and so forth and so on. "Sea star" is just ridiculous. Shame on the ridiculous people who came up with it and shame on the people who put this article at the nonstandard name. Victrix 03:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  8. Support. I'd never even heard of "sea star", and the OED simply describes "sea star" as "a starfish". As already pointed out, move to starfish is legitimately in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME. Greg 08:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  9. Support. Most common English usage, according to WP naming convention. The intro line requires the term sea star in bold as well, of course. In my own Dutch language, the only term is 'zeester' which means literally sea star, but that does not count here. Dutch too has biologically incorrect words, like 'walvis', whale fish which is the mammal simply called whale in English. Don't fight the language. — SomeHuman 23 Jan 2007 16:28 (UTC)

[edit] Survey - in opposition to the move

  1. Oppose. There is a concerted effort within marine biology to change the title from starfish to sea star. The majority of the books I have with publication dates in the last five years refer to "starfish or sea stars" of simply sea stars. The redirect from Starfish is sufficient.--Shoka 21:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    But this is precisely the problem. Wikipedia reports on knowledge, but it doesn't go along with trends until they equal or overcome previous trends. We report on the most common word now, not the way that the biologists think it should be. Patstuarttalk|edits 21:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. If we're going by common terms, then flatulence should be moved to farting as "farting" is a much more common term for it than "flatulence" and also should not claim that humans are apes in the ape article, as the common usage of the term "ape" excludes humans and only includes the nonhuman hominoids. Saying that humans are apes is like saying the Japanese are Caucasians, it's simply wrong by definition. sea star is much more common than the odd terms misohomo which only gets fifteen Google hits. Voortle 22:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  3. Oppose Go with scientific consensus. Redirect starfish here, and educate those who wish to do research. The editor who used this to justify his "misohomo" nonsense did so without understanding the glaring ways in how these two situations differ. CaveatLectorTalk 18:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
    Starfish has always been redirected here, from when this page was renamed to Sea star originally.. The redirect page titles the link Starfishes to differentiate from the six other unrelated meanings of starfish.--Shoka 23:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
  4. Oppose Sea star is a better name, and is common enough that it isn't out of left field. 132.205.44.134 01:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments:

Counting Google hits is not very helpful. Starfish is used in a lot of contexts other than the marine organism, see the redirect page for starfish for example, so it's hard to select only relevant hits. Conversely, "sea star" and seastar are probably less ambiguous. Further, though the class name of sea star is encouraged, the common names of species such as Asterias rubens remains "the common starfish" so generate even more misleading hits.

Note that in older publications cushion-stars are not usually listed as starfish but appear in their own grouping.

In modern usage they are included in the class asteroidea, common name sea star. The class being described in the article.--Shoka 00:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.


Since we must have this article editorially vandalised I can't raise the energy to fight the vandel fight. Off my watchlist --Shoka 21:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bipinaria/larva

Isn't the larva called Bipinaria? - 01:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pluteus?

The end of the first paragraph links to pluteus, which is a kind of mushroom, not the larval form of the sea star. Could someone who knows what's up clarify? -- Joshua BishopRoby 20:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] starfish

how long do they live for? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.232.157.71 (talk) 20:21, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

See here or here. θnce θn this island Speak! 22:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

A starfish arm can only regenerate into a whole new organism if some of the central ring of the starfish is part of the chopped off arm.

Most species must have the central part of the body intact to be able to regenerate, but a few can grow an entire starfish from a single ray.

I don't know which is correct, but they can't both be...Dave.Dunford 10:17, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the Plateas comment. When you click on it at the end of the first paragraph, it goes to a kind of mushroom! what is up with that? mushroom have nothing to do with starfish.

This is probably a result of bad editting or a hyperlink problem.

I'm trying to write a report, and I dont feel like telling my teacher about mushrooms.

If you have an answer, plz help!!Small Textpleaaasseee!!71.225.106.138 20:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] school project

can star fish come back alive when they have been out of water for some time ?

If the starfish has begun to dry out when out of the water, then it dies, and can not be revived if reimmersed.--Mr Fink 15:15, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

what eats a starfish or seastar?

Birds, Sea Otters, and humans who collect them. Might I suggest posting other questions you may have at The Wikipedia Reference desk? There, people look for questions and they will answer your questions. Not that I'm not happy to answer your questions here, but it isn't exactly the right place to do it. --θnce θn this island Speak! 23:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

I suggest that if this page is to be considered under the topic of science that the term in scientific usage be used. I certainly agree that 'starfish' is in most common usage; but let's not aspire to be common; let's be an encyclopedia and not arm the wikipedia bashers with another mistake. A simple test: do a google 'book search' to see which term the scientists use. Heck, if I'm wrong use whatever term you like.Dmccabe (talk) 22:09, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


@Dmccabe

I think you're missing the point. Sea star is an artificial common name. In other words while it may actually be common it is not as common as starfish. (IMHO it is an unnecessary and misguided attempt at linguistic engineering.) If the page is to remain under a common name then it should be starfish. If it is to be under a scientific name it should be Asteroidea.

Wikipedia seems to prefer common names for some things (see onion, banana, apple, walnut, almond, moose or (our old friend) jellyfish) and latin/scientifc names for others (see Corylus avellana (hazelnut), cannabis (marijuana, ganja, weed etc) or Merlangius merlangus (whiting)). Good examples for us though are the entries for haddock and almond. Both have alternative (less) common names, offshore hake and cork nut respectively, but they are not headed up with these names.

Oppose1bj05hua (talk) 05:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Varieties

I noticed that the internal links for pincushion sea star and eleven-armed sea star redirect to the same page. This isn't really important, but I thought that the links should at least be condensed or one could be omitted. I can't edit it myself, as it is semi-protected and I'm not a member. Help would be appreciated. 66.102.198.81 (talk) 21:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)SP

The link Asteroidea of the North Sea is "a must" for a starfish site. ---- slj 12.05.08