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Aquarium New: Grow a Jelly App

Learn more about these floaty superstars of Long Beach.

An app released by a popular destination or nature-minded institution very often has to do solely with your time spent at the place. There might be a map, or hours listed, or further explanation about different exhibits or even what's on the menu at the lunch counter.

Sometimes, though, an app will go much further, especially when an institution recognizes that visitors are completely enraptured with a particular resident. There are many residents of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach to become obsessed over — dear whisker-comical otters, we're very much thinking of you here — but the jellyfish exhibit is an aquarium area that's consistently thronged with humans superfaning over these ocean-dwelling outer space beings.

Okay, jellies are not from outer space — that we know of — and they do grow bigger, as many earthlings tend to do. You can see just how this "growing bigger" concept works for the gelatinous-looking beasties via the Aquarium's new Jelly Lab app, which takes users through the life arc of the long-of-tentacle, mysterious-of-form favorite.

The Android-ready and iPhone-ready free app, which is available through the App Store and Google Play, helps jelly mavens "(d)iscover what it takes to raise a sea jelly through all of its life stages." This includes a look at the early planula phase right through to the "full-grown medusa stage."

Planula, medusa... Even the stages of the tentacled beauties come with poetry-lovely handles.

You won't only raise a bell-topped animal from planula to medusa; you'll learn how the aquarium cares for its many jellies and why the float-tastic beasties are so essential to the universe that exists beneath our planets waves.

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Many an app gives users a way to raise animals and learn more, but to do so via a local institution, one you might visit on the regular, lends the process a bit of place and importance.

And admit it: You've wished you could take a moon jelly home, for your own, after "petting" one at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Consider the Jelly Lab a brain-embiggening, knowledge-deepening way to care for a jelly, without the splishy-splashy issues of water on the carpet or stingers and such.

A jelly on your screen, flush with fun and info, is an excellent way for a terrestrial being to connect with these mysteries of the sea.

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