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Watch this coral wave its hands in the air as if it did not bother him! But in fact, it probably interests them, and they are not really hands – they are the tentacles of coral polyps.
Although it sounds like an accelerated underwater dance party, these tentacles sway in search of food. Coral polyps are the tiny creatures that live in large colonies that make up a whole reef structure. At night, polyps spread their long tentacles out of their skeleton to capture the floating plankton that they eat, according to the Florida National Marine Sanctuary.
This video is a series of clips showing how new polyps are feeding and developing. as the coral structure grows. Peter Kragh, a natural history cameraman, filmed the clips in an aquarium in San Diego over a period of 1 to 3 weeks. [Photos: The Secret Lives of Corals]
Coral Staghorn under the waves Source: Sirachai Arunrugstichai / Getty Images
"The most interesting part of the video is perhaps to see how the new polyps seem to appear Krag told Live Science in an email
The coral in the video is a type of staghorn coral ( Acorpora sp.), A hard coral made of calcium carbonate that is deposited by polyps. Hard corals like this are responsible for the rock structure of a coral reef.The tentacles of the polyps are tinged with fluorescent green because of the tiny algae called zooxanthellae that live inside the polyps and produce Glossy pigments Without the zooxanthellae, the polyps would be colorless [Pretty in Pink: Photos of Bubblegum Coral]
While ocean acidification and increasing temperatures threaten many coral reefs around the world, according to the Coral Reef Alliance, the coral can be resilient. In the seventh clip of the video, titled 206-2, you can see where a piece of broken coral (in the middle) heals and new polyps grow.
Original article on Live Science .
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