People On Twitter Have Hilariously Conflicted Feelings About A "Ravioli" Starfish

Do you ever want to take a bite out of something even though you know it's not edible? This happens to me all the time with shaving cream — my logical brain knows its a chemical cream meant to go on my skin to make shaving easier, but my hungry brain wants it to be whipped cream. (So we're clear: I do not eat shaving cream, and neither should you. LOL.) I know I'm not alone in this feeling, because the Twitterverse has recently experienced a similar problem due to a video circulating of a sea creature that looks just like a delicious Italian pasta. These tweets about a "ravioli" starfish can't help but compare the starfish to delicious, stuffed ravioli.

Scientists on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Okeanos Explorer recently captured images of a starfish off the Southeastern U.S. Coast that pretty much looks exactly like ravioli, per the Ocean Exploration and Research website. On an NOAA mission log posted on July 4, 2019, the starfish, which is officially called Plinthaster dentatus, is described as a "cookie" or "ravioli" star because of its pentagonal shape. The log says the starfish stands out because the arms and legs are "nearly confluent," making it a little more blob-like than starfish that have five discernible appendages.

Check out this video of the strange sea creature:

Other than unanimously agreeing the Plinthaster dentatus is a pretty cool sea creature, Twitter users had one more piece of important commentary — the starfish looks like delicious, stuffed ravioli. Twitter user @BrainManco pretty accurately described how other Twitter users were feeling with a tweet that said, "The forbidden ravioli."

For some Twitter users, the conflict between wanting to eat it and knowing they simply can't was clear. Twitter user @aquafinally, for example, wrote, "[T]his was just added to the list of things i want to eat but cant." Another Twitter user, @AnnDayleview wrote, "It says not edible....but like how not edible are we talking?"

Others didn't even seem to be conflicted, they just wanted to eat the little guys.

Others just wanted to share their love for the starfish, ravioli shape and all.

One Twitter user, @aprillmay, was not impressed at all and Tweeted "I HATE THE OCEAN."

Twitter users aren't the only people excited about this strangely-shaped and potentially delicious starfish. NOAA scientists who came upon a group of these Starfish feeding on a glass sponge were pretty excited too. In one video shared by the NOAA, a scientist can be heard saying:

Holy jumping yikes! That is just the freakin ... freakin-est thing I've seen all day. Wow I am — you're just making all the little lights in my head go off right now. I'm almost kind of weeping right now because ... that was beautiful, that was just amazing.

Part of the reason scientists were probably so excited when they stumbled upon the Plinthaster dentatus is that the species' biology has been largely a mystery to scientists, even though they've known about the species since 1884, according to the NOAA mission log.

Hey, if this little ravioli-looking creature can help further science, then I guess it's a win-win, right? I just never thought watching a video of sea creatures would make me so hungry for pasta, but that's the beauty of the internet!