...Theodora Po; Lenny Korob; Matthew J. McHenry ABSTRACT Sea stars control hundreds of tube feet to navigate their environment with a rudimentary nervous system. Tube feet are capable of responding to stimuli without descending nervous commands, and it is therefore unclear to what extent tactic...

... skeletons to determine their mechanical advantage (MA) and displacement advantage (DA). These models apply to a variety of biological structures, but we explicitly consider the tube feet of a sea star and the body segments of an earthworm, and contrast them with a hydraulic press and a McKibben actuator...

..., suggesting that this rock type is particularly challenging for sea urchins to adhere to. The number of adhesive tube feet that failed during experimental trials and the area used by sea urchins to attach, matches closely with whole animal adhesive force values: higher forces resulted in more tube foot...

... cause relaxation of two other preparations from Asterias — tube feet and the apical muscle of the body wall. The rank order of effectiveness as muscle relaxants when tested at a concentration of 10 μmol l -1 was SNAP>S2>S1 for both tube feet and apical muscle whereas for cardiac stomach it was S2...