Echinoderms Explained: Sea Stars, Sea Urchins, and the Ocean’s Weirdest Hydraulics

Send us Fan Mail Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it. In this deep-dive episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole crack open the bizarre, beautiful world of echinoderms—the “spiny-skinned” sea creatures that are hard on the outside, squishy on the inside, and powered by a literal hydraulic system. We’re talking sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, brittle stars, feather stars, and sea cucumbers—a group that looks like it shouldn’t mak...