Scenes · Study 083
Jellyfish Drift
Seven translucent jellyfish pulse and glide upward through dark water, trailing tentacles that ripple behind each stroke.
What you're looking at
Each jellyfish runs on a pulse cycle. During the contraction its bell narrows and it surges upward, then the bell relaxes and it coasts. Tentacles are chains of points where each follows a sine wave delayed along its length, so every pulse travels down them as a ripple. The glow is a soft shadow in the animal's own colour.
The idea behind it
Jellyfish are among the most energy efficient swimmers known. The relaxing bell creates a second vortex ring that gives a free extra push, so they recover some of the effort of each stroke. They have managed this without a brain for more than five hundred million years.
Try this
Move the pointer near a jellyfish and it will drift away from you.
