Anyway, there really is no such thing as a lolli-polyp, but there are coral polyps (which you sure as heck don't wanna lick). They belong to the phylum Cnidaria, as do jellyfish. And they have stingers like jellyfish - hence the no licking rule.
So, thousands of polyps grow hard shells all attached using calcium carbonate from the sea water. Millions and millions of these shells together make up reefs, essentially huge structures made out of limestone, housing a cornucopia of polyps of every shape, hue, and color. At the Big Reef there are over 400 species of coral - brain coral, fan coral, branch coral, coral soup, coral gumbo, breaded coral, coral and beans...
Oh, yah, and they're carnivorous. Fortunately they're usually only a few centimeters big, so not to worry, they don't eat too much, mostly plankton, algae poop and stuff like that. And they can reproduce (asexually) by splitting in two or (sexually) by spewing millions of eggs and sperm into the ocean. These connect and hatch tiny new polyps, which then swim down onto the coral reefs to start their own shell domiciles. If they don't get eaten first. By whales. Or fish. Or other corals. Can you imagine if they all survived? I mean, for crying out loud, the Big Reef is already 1200 miles long (well technically, it's over 3000 smaller reefs. Either way you can still see it from space).
So there you have it. The world of the "lolli-polyp". Sweet.
flickr.com - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Toadstool Leather Coral - this is a whole colony of polyps, and is so named because it feels like leather to the touch.
wikipedia.com
Sea Nettles, a type of jellyfish, free-swimming relatives of coral. Did you know they have no respiratory or excretory organs?
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