BRANCHING CORAL LARGE (16Wx12Dx10H CM) PIECE WITH TREELIKE STRUCTURE TWO MINOR BRANCH TIPS BROKE

BRANCHING CORAL LARGE (16Wx12Dx10H CM) PIECE WITH TREELIKE STRUCTURE TWO MINOR BRANCH TIPS BROKEN OFF

A LARGE PIECE OF BRANCHING CORAL. IT HAS A WONDERFUL INTRICATE TREELIKE STRUCTURE.
 
HARD CORAL:
Stony coral or hard coral, are marine animals that build themselves a hard skeleton.The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mouth is fringed with tentacles. Although some species are solitary, most are colonial. The founding polyp settles and starts to secrete calcium to protect its soft body. Solitary corals can be as much as 25 cm (10 in) across but in colonial species the polyps are usually only a few millimetres in diameter. These polyps reproduce asexually by budding but remain attached to each other, forming a multi-polyp colony of clones with a common skeleton.
The shape and appearance of each coral colony depends not only on the species, but also on its location, depth, the amount of water movement and other factors.
 
BRANCHING CORAL: Branching corals branch like a tree. They grow from a base or trunk and their branches have projections of their own. Branching corals are very diverse but generally the term branching describes colonies that have secondary branches coming off the first branch. There are various species of branching coral. Although not easy to identify our sample appears to be of the Genus Acropora. Acropora is the most abundant genus of branching corals is with over 100 described species in the Indo-Pacific.
 
CORAL:
Most structures that we call "coral" are, in fact, made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny coral creatures called polyps (eating invertebrate animals called polyps, which are anemone-like). Although corals are mistaken for non-living things, they are living animals. Each soft-bodied polyp secretes a hard outer skeleton of limestone (calcium carbonate) that attaches either to rock or the dead skeletons of other polyps. Coral itself is a flexible word. It applies to the coral exoskeletons that we see as the visible shells of hard corals and/or to the polyp animals that live within those exoskeletons.
Even though they measure just a few millimeters across, corals are animals: theyre multicellular organisms that have nervous systems and digestive tracts, and sustain themselves by feeding on other organisms overwhelmingly the plankton grabbed from the passing soup of algae, eggs and other tiny stuff. Theyre colonial organisms that live in more-or-less organized groups of hundreds to thousands of individuals.
 
SIZE: 16CM WIDE x 12CM DEEP AND 10CM HIGH
 
CONDITION: SOME DAMAGE. TWO BRANCH TIPS HAS BEEN BROKEN OFF. NOT TOO VISIBLE AT FIRST SIGHT. STILL A NICE PIECE FOR DISPLAY.
 
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