Excessively warm water stresses corals and zooxanthellae vacate, leaving bleached coral skeletons haunting the ocean floor, and oceans impoverished. The list of assaults is long-there’s pollution, physical destruction from fishing, and, looming above all, the promised devastation of global warming. It’s no wonder why pegging coral as animal, vegetable, or mineral in a game of 20 Questions might be a stumper.Ĭorals may lie outside neat categories, but they haven’t escaped the havoc we’ve brought to their environment. Corals, then, are animals that contain “plants” (the algae) and secrete stone. Through photosynthesis, these algae (called zooxanthellae) transform sunlight into oxygen and produce nutrients such as glucose and amino acids for the polyp, which provides shelter for the algae in return. But the colors have natural sources: the fluorescent pigments used by a polyp to control the amount of light it lets in, and the photosynthetic pigments of the tiny single-celled algae living symbiotically in the polyps’ tissues. To a human, the hot pink, vivid orange, and highlighter yellow hues evoke something artificial such as paint. But corals’ surfaces are actually optimized to hurt: polyps use tiny stinging cells to snag food such as plankton as it drifts by.Įven their striking colors have an unexpected source. That infrastructure, with its decorative, almost cartoonish, shapes and textures, can seem inanimate and harmless. Clearly “mineral” shouldn’t be completely dismissed. It’s evocative of a human city: the corals build elaborate stony infrastructures and then live within them. New polyps build on top of the old, growing the colony and the reef. Each polyp builds a tiny calcium carbonate base that welds it to its colony, which, depending on the species may be shaped like a brain, or a cluster of pillars, or even a branching tree. The solid mass beneath is its permanent legacy. Yet the suggestion of a plant persisted, and today corals belong to the aptly named class Anthozoa, or “flower animals.”īut the flower-like polyps are just the surface of a coral-its living skin. Eventually, microscopes revealed the truth: corals are animals, built of tiny, soft-bodied polyps, each with a whorl of tentacles somewhat akin to petals. Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus classified them as “lithophytes” (rock plants). Roman author and naturalist Pliny determined they were neither plant nor animal, but should be considered a third type of living thing. Yet for centuries, no one knew where to slot corals. In the game of 20 Questions, everything falls into one of three categories: animal, vegetable, or mineral. At every turn, corals defy the simple categories that most people use to understand living things. Coral reefs are deeply weird, psychedelic places for humans, which may be why people spend nearly US $10-billion each year visiting them. In a moment, he travels from a familiar place into a wildly different one. Septem| 2,000 words, 13 photos Share this articleĪ human swimming down to a coral reef is like a caveman stepping out of his cave and into midtown Manhattan. If you’ve ever wondered about the life of a coral, this photo essay will help. Photo by Jurgen Freund/Nature Picture Library/Corbis Coral, Explained A little bit algae, a little bit rock, and a lot animal. Ikea is updating its 40-year-old classic Poang armchair with a frame and covers in graded shades of coral, priced £85 ( ).These cup corals are one of the dizzying variety of coral species worldwide. He adds: “Living Coral has a pleasant softness, unlike some strident fleeting colours of the moment.” Thanks to Instagram and Pinterest, customers are getting bolder, says Charlie Marshall, founder of Loaf, the London upholstery specialists ( ). Use it in a downstairs loo and add vibrant coral towels. Not surprisingly coral works best on fronded designs of coral itself, where the pattern breaks up the intense colour, for example in a pretty undersea affair from Murals Wallpaper ( .uk).Īnd fashion maestro Matthew Williamson typically adds fantasy to his Coralino wallpaper design, where stems of coral catch treasures from a sunken Spanish galleon ( ). New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.
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