Thanks once again to Yowie Group and their penchant for producing some truly obscure animal toys I am now able to double the number of reviews for echinoderms on the Animal Toy Blog. Yes, as of this writing there is only one other review for a group that contains over 7,000 species.
Today we’re looking at the sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides), part of Yowie’s Animals with Superpowers series. The stated superpower, in this case, is regeneration. Sea stars, or star fish if you prefer, can regrow severed arms and in some species their bodies too, provided that a portion of their central body is intact. A few other species can even regrow their entire body from a severed arm. Sea stars can do this because each arm contains various vital organs that sustain it.
The Yowie sunflower sea star measures 2” (5.08 cm), making it 1/19 in scale. The sunflower sea star is one of the largest sea stars, with an arm span measuring up to 3.3’ (1 meter). They’re also fast, voracious predators, able to move 1 meter per minute with a diet that includes urchins, clams, sea cucumbers, and other sea stars.
The Yowie sea star has 18 arms, which falls within the range of the number of arms the actual species has, between 16-24. The figure is roughly textured with suckers and a mouth on the center of the underside. The arms are fused together in twos and threes. Everything looks anatomically sound but I think it would be hard to mess up a sea star too much. The sunflower sea star lives in the northeast Pacific, from Alaska south to southern California where they inhabit kelp and seaweed beds in the low subtidal and intertidal zones. The species comes in a range of colors including orange, red, brown, yellow, and purple. The Yowie sea star is orange with some white coloration blended in around the center of the figure.
Once again, I am delighted by this particular figure from Yowie, and this is exactly the sort of thing that motivates me to buy them in the first place. The Yowie sunflower sea star is listed as common on the Yowie rarity chart, and currently in distribution, so should be easy to find
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Sadly the sunflower sea star is now endangered. It has succumbed to the wasting disease that had ravaged starfish populations up and down the PNW coast in the last few years.
Yup, that was a sad bit of information I learned while researching the species for this review.
yeah I saw the recent update on the IUCN website.