Jellyfish Gallery

No brain, no heart, no bones — just a pulsing bell and 500 million years of getting the job done. Moon jellies and sea nettles drift in specially engineered kreisel tanks.

Overview

Inside the exhibit.

Jellyfish are about 95% water, have no brain, no heart, and no centralized nervous system, and have still been doing exactly what they do for at least 500 million years — making them older than dinosaurs, trees, and possibly even bones themselves. In the Jellyfish Gallery, moon jellies (Aurelia aurita) drift in slow, luminous clouds, their translucent bells pulsing in a rhythm that looks almost hypnotic, while Pacific sea nettles trail long golden tentacles lined with stinging cells used to capture drifting plankton.

The tanks themselves are almost as interesting as the animals: jellyfish have no means of active steering, so a normal square aquarium would eventually trap them in a corner against the filtration intake. Ours are kreisel tanks — circular, with a gentle curved flow that keeps the jellies suspended safely in the current indefinitely, the same specialized tank design used by nearly every public aquarium that keeps jellyfish anywhere in the world.