New Microscope Shows Coral Colonies Kissing, Fighting and Eating

Although corals 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 in their natural habitat.