Coral Life

We were looking at coral today and decided to share some interesting tidbits !
Note for parents use of sexual terminology ( ok its coral but thought I should mention it ;)

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A coral "head /reef", commonly perceived to be a single organism, is actually formed of thousands of individual but genetically identical polyps, each polyp only a few millimeters in diameter. Over thousands of generations, the polyps lay down a skeleton that is characteristic of their species. A head of coral grows by asexual reproduction of the individual polyps. Corals also breed sexually by spawning, with corals of the same species releasing gametes simultaneously over a period of one to several nights around a full moon.
See wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral

Corals come in many many different shapes, sizes and colors and make a home for lots of animals. They can grow together to create big "reefs" that are like hard forests and homes to many creatures ( see "finding Nemo" disney movie) and are included in maps of the oceans and seas for sailors to make sure they do not run aground on the islands made from coral.

We added this clip first because it is one that we thought explained a bit about what videos we wanted to share.
Coral can seem like a rock , but it is quite alive, it doesn't seem to have a "lot of brain" but every year throughout the ocean a number of these species spawn at the same time!
We thought it was pretty neat that coral could decide when to release its eggs together - even when they are separated by hundreds of miles.
There are lots of ideas of why this happens but no one knows for sure - an excellent example of why we need more young scientists figuring things out!



We liked this one too