This Animal Can Spit Stomach Out Of Its Mouth
By: NDTVNewsDesk
Image: Pexels
The starfish, which ejects its cardiac stomach to digest prey, is famous for spitting its stomach out of its mouth.
Image: Pexels
Its stomach is unique, featuring two parts-a large, eversible cardiac stomach and a smaller, star-shaped pyloric stomach.
Image: Pexels
It eats prey like clams and mussels externally, then retracts it to finish digestion inside its body.
Image: Pexels
Its digestive enzymes are secreted onto the prey, turning the soft tissues into a "soup".
Image: Pexels
It then sucks the liquefied food back into its body to be further processed by its second stomach (the pyloric stomach).
Image: Pexels
Once the meal is digested and absorbed, the starfish retracts its stomach back into its body using a specific set of stomach muscles.
Image: Pexels
This method bypasses the limitation of their small mouth, enabling them to consume prey larger than their oral opening.
Image: Pexels
It's one of the most unusual feeding strategies in the animal kingdom, perfectly suited for their diet of slow-moving invertebrates.
Image: Pexels
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