Solved cryptogram
A bleached coral has thrown out the algae living inside it, and those algae were feeding it.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to NOAA.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 74 letters over 18 different ones, graded medium.
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What it means
Reef building corals are animals that farm. Single celled algae live in their tissue, photosynthesize, and hand over the bulk of the food the coral lives on, and it is the algae that supply the color. Under stress, chiefly water that stays too warm for too long, the coral expels them and turns bone white, showing the skeleton through clear tissue. It is not dead at that point, but it is starving, and it has weeks rather than years.
The claim comes from NOAA.
- SourceNOAA
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length74 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
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- UCAR Center for Science Educationmedium, 72 letters
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