Sharkskin basket star
Amazing fact
Astroboa arctos has a brown body, with a slightly paler mouth side and arm tips.
公益財団法人 黒潮生物研究所
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
It uses its finely branched arms to catch plankton in the water and eat it.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Sharkskin basket star
- Scientific name
- Astroboa arctos
- Japanese name
- サメハダテヅルモヅル
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Ophiuroidea
- Order
- Euryalida
- Family
- Gorgonocephalidae
- Genus
- Astroboa
It lives in the seas from Sagami Bay to Okinawa, and its body surface is rough, like sharkskin.
A relative of brittle stars, its arms branch again and again so that they look like tree roots.
How the Sharkskin basket star lives
It is active at night. It spreads its arms wide on rocks and similar places. It lives in rocky areas and similar places with good water flow.
公益財団法人 黒潮生物研究所Basic data
- Diet
- Plankton
- Range
- Sagami Bay to Okinawa
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- サメハダテヅルモヅル
- 한국어
- 곰거미불가사리
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — サメハダテヅルモヅルChecked: 2026-11-04
- 公益財団法人 黒潮生物研究所 — サメハダテヅルモヅル Astroboa arctos Matsumoto, 1915Checked: 2026-11-09
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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