Corals come in a wide array of shapes, sizes and colors, and they build sprawling reefs that serve as refuges for vast amounts of biodiversity in the ocean. But they are not known for being fleet of foot.
This is because out of the more than 6,000 species of coral known to science, most are colonial organisms — individual animals that make their homes next to and on top of one another. And as adults, these corals are immobile.
But there’s another, lesser-known and understudied kind of coral that’s completely solitary. And some of these animals, known as mushroom corals, can walk.
“They’re very little,” said Brett Lewis, a marine ecologist and microscopist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “And they are adorable.”
Using time-lapse cameras and an aquarium that blocked out all other light, Mr. Lewis recently put inch-long mushroom corals through an experiment.