Look at this!
I saw it on a French Nature programme, but it’s originally from the BBC.
If you look carefully you’ll see the little puffer fish at the centre of his creation. Isn’t it totally amazing?
How can such a wee fish make such a perfectly accurate circular pattern like this? And isn’t it just beautiful?
Apparently this is what the male puffer fish creates to attract a female. If the female fish is satisfied with the creation she lays her eggs right in the middle of it, he fertilises them, then she lays more, which he fertilises. Then she swims off.
The way he makes the pattern, it creates a perfect consistency of sand in the middle for the protection of the eggs. In other words, from an engineering perspective, it’s brilliant.
But what amazed me most was how he makes it so beautiful, and how the beauty of the pattern attracts the female.
Are you aware of any other creatures, apart from human beings, which produce creative works of beauty? I know certain birds, and some other creatures, can create incredible nests, but ones which seem to be created to be beautiful? I didn’t know other creatures did that.
