1 posting-Online Reading

Do starfish have faces?

Starfish are not fish. They are properly known as sea stars, and are classified as Echinodermata (spiny skinned), the same phylum of invertebrates as sea cucumbers and urchins.

It's hard to have a face when you don't have a head. Sea stars, like all echinoderms, are radially symmetrical with a top side, but no front and back. They have five - or more - arms and absolutely no notion of forwards or backwards.

Sea stars have a groove running along the bottom of each arm that contains hundreds of tiny "tube feet". These not only enable sea stars to move, but are also equipped with suction cups, which allow them to grip surfaces with some of the tube feet and propel themselves forward with others. Each arm contains a single tube foot that is longer than the other feet and does not have a suction cup. When a sea star moves, this special tube is able to sense chemicals in the water.

Sea stars have no eyes, noses, ears or heads, but they do have mouths, usually located right in the centre of the bottom of the sea star. They feast on oysters, clams, mussels, coral, fish and other animals that live near the floor of the sea. While it takes some skill for us to pry open an oyster, sea stars have mastered their technique; they wrap their arms around the oyster and use their tube feet to pry apart the oyster shell. Once there is the slightest crack in the shell, the sea star extends its jellylike stomach out of its mouth and inserts the stomach inside the shell of the oyster. The digestive juices of the stomach move into the crack of the shell while the inside-out stomach of the sea star digests its prey.

Reflection:
There are 5 types of online reading which are reading for pleasure, reading for information, reading for task completion, reading for instruction and incidental reading. This article was took from the Reader's Digest magazine. Through my understanding, i conclude that this article is reading for pleasure. This is because the content in this article is all about the facts of life on starfish. Everyone can read this article at everywhere for the purpose of entertainment. This article provides the general knowledge about the starfish therefore the readers can enjoy their reading if they were interested on this topic.Apart from that, comparing with the text of reading for instruction and task completion, the structure that used in the text of reading for pleasure is more simple and easy to understand. In addition, the language which used in the text of reading for information is more complicated if compare with the text of reading for pleasure. This is because the language in the text of reading for information normally involved a lot of grammar and vocabulary which are difficult to understand.

URL: http://www.readersdigest.com.my/rd/rdhtml/en/magazine/mag_fullcontent.jsp?cid=6772