--- title: Watch Coral Colonies Eat, Fight, and Kiss description: Scientists use a new underwater microscope to observe coral in its natural habitat for the first time. canonical: https://time.com/4406312/coral-colonies-microscope-kissing-eating-fighting/ author: Marisa Gertz article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-14T16:42:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:59:46.550Z article:section: Science og:title: New Microscope Shows Coral Colonies Kissing, Fighting and Eating og:description: Coral likes to kiss too og:url: https://time.com/4406312/coral-colonies-microscope-kissing-eating-fighting/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Microscope Shows Coral Colonies Kissing, Fighting and Eating twitter:description: Coral likes to kiss too twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # New Microscope Shows Coral Colonies Kissing, Fighting and Eating > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Marisa Gertz](https://time.com/author/marisa-gertz/) ## Marisa Gertz Jul 14, 2016 4:42 PM UTC by [Marisa Gertz](https://time.com/author/marisa-gertz/) ## Marisa Gertz Jul 14, 2016 4:42 PM UTC Although [corals](http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial%5Fcorals/coral01%5Fintro.html) look like a plant, they are actually animals, made up of thousands of individual polyps living together in a colony. Because of their small size, scientific observation of them has been difficult, if not impossible outside of a lab. Now, Andrew Mullen and Tali Treibitz from the University of California San Diego have developed a new way to observe [coral colonies](http://time.com/4292505/great-barrier-reef-climate-change/) in their natural habitat. The Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM) allows divers to capture photos of corals over time without removing samples to be studied in a lab, as they demonstrated in a paper published in [Nature](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160712/ncomms12093/full/ncomms12093.html) on July 12th. They used the BUM in the Gulf of Eilat at the northern tip of the Red Sea to observe corals feeding, fighting, sharing, and even ‘kissing’, a previously unobserved behavior. As [coral bleaching](http://time.com/4375553/coral-reefs-bleaching-climate-change/) threatens the world’s [reefs](http://time.com/4313908/coral-reef-global-warming-climate-change-miami/), they hope that the instrument will be an important tool in understanding how corals work in the complex and constantly changing environment of the sea floor. ### Kissing  Andrew D. Mullen; Gif by Marisa Gertz for TIME Two polyps connect their gastrovascular openings at night, a behavior that has never been documented before. Dubbed ‘polyp kissing,’ this behavior likely allows the polyps to exchange materials, such as food. ### Communal feeding  Andrew D. Mullen; Gif by Marisa Gertz for TIME Scientists injected Artemia, a brine shrimp, near the coral and captured a time-lapse video of communal feeding between two neighboring polyps. The two polyps work together by intertwining their tentacles to digest their prey. ### Competition with Pocillopora  Andrew D. Mullen; Gif by Marisa Gertz for TIME Two different loose corals colonies, Stylophora on the left and Pocillopora on the right were placed close together to induce competition. When corals compete for dominance, they emit mesenterial filaments, string-like structures, which they use to attack and, ultimately, digest their rival. ### Competition with Platygyra  Andrew D. Mullen; Gif by Marisa Gertz for TIME Here, the Platygyra, on the left, has attacked and is beginning to digest the Stylophora, on the right. Scientists found that competition response times and attack mechanisms differed depending on the coral. When a Platygyra was placed next to one of its own kind, for example, it did not attack at all. ### Brine shrimp  Andrew D. Mullen; Gif by Marisa Gertz for TIME A Platygyra colony extends its filaments when exposed to a net filled with brine shrimp, right. 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