Small fish makes undersea "crop circles"

NewImage

This pretty pattern was created by a small, amorous pufferfish.

Underwater cameras showed that the artist was a small puffer fish who, using only his flapping fin, tirelessly worked day and night to carve the circular ridges. The unlikely artist – best known in Japan as a delicacy, albeit a potentially poisonous one – even takes small shells, cracks them, and lines the inner grooves of his sculpture as if decorating his piece. Further observation revealed that this “mysterious circle” was not just there to make the ocean floor look pretty. Attracted by the grooves and ridges, female puffer fish would find their way along the dark seabed to the male puffer fish where they would mate and lay eggs in the center of the circle. In fact, the scientists observed that the more ridges the circle contained, the more likely it was that the female would mate with the male. The little sea shells weren’t just in vain either. The observers believe that they serve as vital nutrients to the eggs as they hatch, and to the newborns.

The Deep Sea Mystery Circle – a love story

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Delightful Creatures

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

fuzzyfuzzyfungus

If you got swirl problems I feel bad for you, son…
aarrnnee

I got 99 problems, but a fish ain’t one
spacemunky

I’d hit it.
http://profiles.google.com/max.kingsbury Max Kingsbury

The Bower Birds of the sea? Very cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird
http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

Never underestimate the power of the woo…even fish woo.
timquinn

If it doesn’t have paragraph of bullshit backing it up it ain’t art.
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  A pufferfish is an organism with an ego so large and prickly that it can be used as a physical defense mechanism.
  
  They consider explanatory text to be a repulsive pandering to lower-middlebrow pretensions to understanding of Art and refuse to do it, even ironically.
mexicomaine

If you build it, they will come.
- BarBarSeven
  
  Or at least fake it for the security of a relationship.
Mantissa128

Women. They’re all the same.
HiTek LoLife

“Ribbed for her pleasure”
dave3

“This pretty pattern was created by a small, amorous pufferfish.”Yeah, that’s what they want you to think.
Souse

Fugu me!
stillcantfightthedite

I dunno, maybe we should get a second opinion from Jacques Vallée regarding the source of these mysterious circles.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Wonderful to think of something this lovely and mysterious being uncovered only now, in 2012…..just imagine what else lies waiting in the depths of the sea and the last untrodden jungle spaces?