Relating to a structure that entraps food and mucus that may be employed by certain sea organisms to facilitate the capture of particles: Sea cucumbers, nuculoid bivalve mollusks, and some tube-dwelling polychaetes (marine worms) gather detritus (loose fragments of organic waste) by means of tentacle structures at the sediment-water area and transport them to their mouths.

Some tentacle feeders are anemones and corals that use various types of stinging, entrapping, and mucus-laden nematocysts, or specialized cells, that contain a barbed and threadlike tube that delivers paralyzing stings when they are sent into attackers or prey.