11.sea anemones and coral animals 1. have you ever seen flowers called anemones? 2 there are water...
TRANSCRIPT
11. Sea Anemones and Coral Animals
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Have you ever seen flowers called anemones?
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There are water animals that look like these flowers
These animals are called sea anemones
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They belong to a group of invertebrate water animals known
as coelenterates
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Vocabulary:
coelenterate
A kind of invertebrate water animals
Some of the world’s most colorful and beautiful sea animals are
coelenterates
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A sea anemone has many tentacles, or arms
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The tentacles have special cells with poison in them
The sea anemone stings passing tiny fish or crustaceans with its tentacles
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Then, the tentacles take the food into the sea anemone’s mouth
Sea anemones can be found everywhere in the oceans
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Most of them live along the seacoast, where they attach themselves to rocks
and shells
Like sea anemones, coral animals are coelenterates
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But unlike sea anemones, coral animals have skeletons
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Vocabulary:
skeleton
A framework that supports the body of an animal
Coral animals are usually less than 1 inch wide
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At one end of the coral animal’s body is a mouth
Tiny tentacles catch even tinier plankton, which the coral animals
feed on
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Coral animals live together in a colony
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Vocabulary:
colony
A group of animals that live together
The coral animals attach themselves to each other by thin tissue
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A coral colony can be very big
As coral animals reproduce, the older ones die
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Their skeletons stay where they are, and new coral animals attach
themselves to the skeletons
As time passes, the colony grows
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Colonies can grow in different shapes
Some look like heads of cabbage, and others look like trees without
leaves
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Coral colonies grow only in warm salt water
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They can be found, for example, in the South Pacific Ocean and in the
Caribbean Sea
Many colonies can grow together to make a wall, called a coral reef
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Vocabulary:
Coral reef
A wall formed when large colonies of coral animals grow together
A reef can go all the way from the bottom of the ocean
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to the surface of the water
The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is the world’s largest coral reef
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It is about 1,250 miles long
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