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Anemone and Corals - The Cnidarians

We'll start by explaining that anemone, coral, and jellyfish are all related. We broke them up into two different sections because of their body types. They are all from the Phylum Cnidaria. Comb jellies are a side step away from jellyfish. They are in the Phylum Ctenophora. They look similar, but are different in some important ways.

Anemone

Images of Anemones

Specifically, anemones are considered the cnidarians that look like flowers. They have a central body and dozens of tentacles waving in the water, waiting for prey to pass by. You can find them alone or in groups. If you ever go to tide pools, you will see them all over the rocks. You will find anemone wherever you find a lot of fish and healthy water.

Corals

Images of Corals

Corals are different from anemone because they have a skeleton of sorts. Anemones are squishy and basically filled with water. Corals create a hard skeleton of calcium carbonate. You might see that skeleton for sale in stores. When you find living coral and look very closely, you will see thousands of living cells waving about in the water. We should probably mention, although obvious, that coral do not go anywhere. Once they settle down, that's it. You might find coral alone or thousands of them together forming entire reefs like the Great Barrier Reef near Australia.
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