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Article: Coral reefs.
- Article from:
- Science Weekly
- Article date:
- October 18, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Science Weekly, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A coral reef (cor-al reef) is like a busy underwater city filled with color. A reef can grow best in places where the water is shallow, warm and salty. A coral reef is built by very tiny, soft animals called coral polyps (cor-al pol-yps). For protection (pro-tec-tion), they build stony cup-shaped houses around their soft bodies.
Polyps like to live close together. Their houses are connected (con-nec-ted) to one another like an apartment building. Some of these "apartment buildings" are shaped like brains of fingers. Others look like moose antlers of cabbages. It takes thousands of years to build a coral reef. Each coral reef is made up of millions of coral ...