Crossword-Solution: OPHIUROID 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 15

Literally it signifies "Snake-tail" (ὄφις, snake; οὐρά, tail), and thus vividly describes the wriggling, writhing movements of the long thin arms, by means of which the Ophiuroid climbs in and out of the crevices between the stones and gravel in which it lives.

Closer inspection shows that in the Ophiuroid the arms are continued inwards along grooves, which run on the under surface of the disc, and that they finally coalesce to form a buccal framework surrounding the mouth.

Speaking generally, an Ophiuroid either drags itself forward by two arms and pushes itself by the other three (Fig.

The general character of this modification is similar to that affecting the first ambulacral and adambulacral ossicles in the arms of an Asteroid, but in the Ophiuroid the change is much more profound.

There is a large ganglion where the radial cord joins the nerve-ring, and, owing to the more specialised condition of the nervous system, a severed arm in an Ophiuroid is much more helpless than an arm of an Asteroid.