Sand Bubbler Crab Patterns - Finstr & Georg Scholz
While a lot of attention is given to primates, elephants and even members of the canine group, in respect to ‘art’ created by animals, the tiny Sand Bubbler Crab could be the unseen hero of the process art category. It creates various kinds of organised patterns with radial symmetries and branching structures in the sand, the result of food foraging activities.
Naturally there is no interfacing with tools such as paintbrushes but the species Dotilla Fenestrate does create circle packing patterns and emergent aggregations that may well interest the algorithmic artisan. During low tide these crabs emerge from their holes to find food. They sift the sand and extract food from it then leave behind little spheres of processed sand creating a memory network to indicate where food has already been extracted. Environmental factors, such the local tidal system, as well as predatorial variables act as is a parameters in this system to effects the final configurations of the patterns generated.
Marquisde has created a Flickr gallery of Sand Bubbler Crab artworks and Stretta has uploaded a HD video of one of these little wonders busy at work.