Not all corals are couch potatoes. When faced with live burial, this
nomadic mushroom variety can swell up to cast off sediment, reaching up
to five times its resting size.
The time-lapse, captured in an aquarium by ecologist Pim Bongaerts
from the University of Queensland, shows a coral huffing in controlled
pulses under a pile of sand. The tentacles move in unison, likely due
to contraction within the tissue. A few hours later, it unearths itself
from the rubble.
"I was completely blown away," says Bongaerts. "I had no idea corals
were able to perform such controlled movements. People always tend to
think of corals as rocks or plants, however these videos clearly show
that they are living animals with their own interesting behaviour."
Although
scientists knew that corals could unbury themselves, this key survival
tactic has seldom been documented. Bongaerts suspects that pulses are
created as polyps suck in and expel water, but he plans to further
investigate the feat. Along with his collaborator Bert Hoeksema
of the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis, he also hopes to
document more of these corals' secrets, such as their motility along
the seabed and aggression between corals.
If you enjoyed this video, check out more undersea wonders like Antarctic mega-crabs and laser-illuminated jellyfish.
http://www.newscientist.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment