New research on tagged jellyfish has revealed the animal can sense ocean currents, but they do this was not clear.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology believe their results can also explain how jellyfish "blooms" come to form. These groups of jellyfish are known to contain as little as a few hundred to as many as a few million animals per bloom.
"Most people who have spent time on the coast will have seen jellyfish and probably assume they are simple animals that just drift with ocean currents," study co-author Graeme Hays, a professor at Deakin University's School of Life and Environmental Sciences, told the Speaker. "Our work shows this is not necessarily the case, and instead jellyfish can show remarkable abilities to sense currents, change their swimming behavior accordingly, and hence maintain their position in preferred areas. These abilities contribute to the massive blooms of jellyfish that are widely being reported around the world.
"We now know that jellyfish are not simply passive drifters, but instead can make complex movements that help maintain massive blooms which have been seen in many places around the world."
Attaching the tags to the jellyfish was reportedly quite easy and the researchers were confident in them staying on. Hays told BBC News there seems to be a correlation with how these blooms form and the animal's ability to sense ocean currents.
What the scientists cannot do is explain how they collectively pick the direction in which to travel.
"Active and directed swimming helps maintain blooms," Hays told BBC News. "With this knowledge of their behavior we can start to have some predictive capability for bloom dynamics."
