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Up until recently, starfish were thought to navigate strictly by smell, but according to a new study at the University of Copenhagen, starfish actually have up to 50 eyes on their limbs which they use to navigate. The new study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, explains how starfish can even see in the deep sea where there is no light. While they have many eyes, they do not have 20/20 vision.

The study’s senior researcher, Anders Garm, noted that a starfishes sight is “500 times less acute than human vision” and that they see only in black and white. Garm is an associate professor of neurobiology at the Marine Biological Section of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Of the 13 starfish the researchers studied, 12 were found to have vision. The species were collected from both shallow and deep environments off of the Greenland coast. During the study, Ctenodiscus crispatus was the only species they found to not possess eyesight. This particular starfish spends its life in the sediment and therefore likely relies on its sense of smell to navigate.

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