With 100 moving tentacles and the relentless wriggling may make it look like an alien or even a sea monster, but this incredibly creepy creature is a less known, distant relative of the starfish, knows as the Basket Star (scientific name: gorgonocephalus caputmedusae).
The basket star, which was caught off the coast of Singapore by a fisherman, Ong Han Boon, actually has five arms, each of which are further split into more dexterous tentacles. It uses these tentacles to catch its prey, including plankton and small crustaceans, underwater.
The 54-year-old fisherman, who was sipping on his favourite beer at the island of Sentosa in Singapore, waiting for a tasty fish to catch on his line, he noticed a pull on the line, he told Mirroro. The bizarre-looking alien creature that came out of the water was, however, something he had never expected to see.
He said, "I spotted the line going up and down, and feeling a bit peckish I got quite excited as I hauled it in...But when I pulled it out of the water I was completely flummoxed by what I was looking at."
Hoping that someone would be able to identify the "alien sea monster," Boon had taken a video of the basket star and posted it online.
"I've asked all my friends and none of them know and all my internet searches have not turned up anything that looks like this..So, if no one can't identify it then I guess I'm right - it's either an alien or I've discovered a new species of mutant sea creature," said Boon, before adding, "That would not surprise me with all the pollution they put in the water nowadays."
The creature was, however, identified as the 'basket star' by the online community, and comes in red, orange, white and grey body colours.
Boon added that though he has seen many odd things pop out of the sea, the basket star is a first. The basket star is a member of the echinoderm family and is said to live along the Pacific coast from the Bering Sea to southern California.
