Home▸Animals & Their World▸Sea Turtle Foraging: Metabolic Energy Budget (2D)

Sea Turtle Foraging: Metabolic Energy Budget (2D)

2D sea-turtle foraging lab: a Q10 thermal metabolic-rate model, seagrass patches that regrow by logistic growth, and a Shadden double-gyre ocean current drive a real energy budget — turtles forage, feed and rest, paying a real cost of transport when swimming against the current.

Animals & Their World2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

Details

CategoryAnimals & Their World

RenderingCanvas 2D

DifficultyModerate

Target FPS60

ControlsDrag the turtle-count, water-temperature, current-strength and seagrass-regrowth sliders, then use Reset, Pause or Storm pulse to watch how metabolic cost and food availability drive each turtle between foraging and resting.

sea turtle foragingQ10 metabolic scalingcost of transportlogistic growthdouble-gyre currentenergy budget

Related simulations

Turtles Ocean (3D)The 3D original — sea turtles swimming and feeding in an oceanic scene.

Leatherback Turtle Deep Dive (2D)Another real-equation 2D turtle companion, focused on diving physiology.

Browse Animals & Their WorldAll animal-behaviour and ecology simulations. ⊞ All 756 in Animals & Their World →

This 2D companion replaces the decorative "turtles swim in a pretty ocean" scene of the 3D original with a real energy budget: every turtle's metabolic drain scales with water temperature through a Q10 thermal coefficient (ectotherm physiology — metabolic rate roughly doubles to triples per 10 °C of warming), ocean transport runs on the Shadden double-gyre flow field used in real ocean-current research, and each turtle must actively compensate for that current to reach its target — so swimming against the gyre costs real energy while riding it costs almost none. Seagrass patches regrow by logistic growth and get grazed down as turtles feed, and energy below 25% forces a rest state until it recovers, producing the genuine forage/rest cycle of a central-place forager rather than a scripted animation loop.

⚙ Under the hood

Eight seagrass patches regrow via dB/dt = r·B·(1-B) inside a Shadden double-gyre current box (the standard oscillating test flow from ocean-transport / Lagrangian-coherent-structures research). Each turtle picks a desired ground velocity toward food (or a rest drift), and because it must fight or ride the current to hit that velocity, its actual paddling effort is desiredVelocity − current; energy drains at a rate proportional to that effort squared, scaled by a Q10=2.5 thermal metabolic multiplier for the set water temperature. Feeding near a patch converts grazed biomass directly into energy. Verified numerically: raising water temperature or current strength measurably shortens time-to-rest, and turtles reliably recover once seagrass biomass rebuilds — a real, parameter-driven energy budget, not a fixed animation cycle.

sea turtle foragingQ10 metabolic scalingcost of transportlogistic growthdouble-gyre currentenergy budget

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install