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| | Wet and Salty: Brittle Star (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19) |
 | | Brittle stars are echinoderms, which means that they're related to starfish (or more accurately, sea stars.) They have pentamerous radial symmetry, which means that they have 5 arms arranged around a central disk. |
 | | Unlike their somewhat passive cousins the sea stars, brittle stars are relatively fast, and their thin, whip-like arms tend to writhe independently of each other when the animal is disturbed. |
 | | Closely related to brittle stars, basket stars (which have long tangled arms, hence the name) are also Ophiuroids. |
| techhouse.brown.edu /~spg/brittle.html (146 words) |
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