They always say, the fun in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is the way it wiggles. In a new study, Eli Halperin has followed the wiggles of a BEC composed of dysprosium atoms that are little magnets. He has cleverly chosen a coordinate system where it is clear to see how the BEC wiggles: Up and down? Sideways? Or something else? In experiments, the gas can be tuned form a liquid-like droplet to a gas. In the liquid (left panel below), excitations propagate mostly up-and-sown, along the long axis along which the liquid is polarized. In the gas (right panel), the gas alternates between wide-and-short, and narrow-and-tall, like a water balloon. And in the interesting transition region (middle), it doesn’t really do either: the excitation looks like a caterpillar reaching for a leaf.