Sea animals that live as colonies of many identical polyps, each a few millimetres across with a ring of stinging tentacles around its mouth. Reef-building corals lay down a hard limestone skeleton and build reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef; other corals live in cold, deep water.
Quick answers
What is it?Cnidarian
Carnivore?Yes
Its polyps catch plankton and small fish with stinging tentacles, but most reef corals get most of their energy from algae living inside their tissues.
Dangerous?No
Domesticated?No
Awake when?Night
Most corals pull their tentacles in by day and spread them at night to catch plankton.
Hibernates?No
Kept as a pet?No
Do people eat it?No
At a glance
Found inOceans
HabitatCoast, Open ocean
ColoursOrange, Pink, White
SizeSmall
LegsNone
Covered inSkeleton
Lives incolonies
Lives for100–5000 years
Lays eggs
In the wild
- Where it lives
- Tropical and subtropical reefs, mostly in clear water less than 60 m deep; cold-water corals live as deep as 3,300 m and as far north as Scotland and the Aleutian Islands.
- What it eats
- Plankton and small fish caught with stinging tentacles, plus food made by the algae living in its tissues.
Did you know
An animal, not a plant: each coral is a colony of tiny polyps that catch food with stinging tentacles.
People thought corals were plants until the 18th century, when William Herschel saw under a microscope that they are animals.
Many corals spawn all at once overnight, often around a full moon.
Often confused with
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