Beautiful Colourful Corals

By laszlo-photo

Corals are invertebrate marine organisms that have external or internal stonelike skeletons. There are several thousands different types of corals. Stony corals are the most widespread and can be found anywhere from fairly shallow water to depths of several thousands metres.

Corals were once thought to be plants but they are actually animals, often several of them in a single coral called polyps. Polyps have tentacles (and with those can catch small preys) stomach and they canalso reproduce sexually (although most corals are hermaphrodite while other reproduce asexually by splitting into two organisms).

Corals often live in colonies and the most common type of coral, the stony corals and the hard corals are the one smost often found in coral reefs. Coral reefs are in danger because of pollution and the rising of temperature in the oceans and people diving to remove them. Many countries have made illegal removing corals from reefs but at this rate about 50% of coral reefs could disappeared within the next 20 years. The loss of coral would not be just an environmental tragedy but corals have been used in certain drugs, in the fight against cancer and as bone replacement in humans.

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