The tiny pufferfish that carves giant geometric crop circles in the sea
Mysterious geometric circles on the seafloor baffled divers for years — until they found the artist.
Which one is REALLY true about the White-Spotted Pufferfish?
The short version
The white-spotted pufferfish, barely five inches long, spends over a week flapping its fins to sculpt a perfectly symmetrical sand circle almost seven feet wide — nearly twenty times its own length — to attract a mate, then abandons it and builds a new one.
Why it's so weird
- ✓The White-Spotted Pufferfish is barely five inches long, yet builds a sand circle almost seven feet across, nearly twenty times its own body length.
- ✓The White-Spotted Pufferfish spends over a week swimming along the bottom, flapping its fins to sculpt a perfectly symmetrical pattern in the sand.
- ✓The White-Spotted Pufferfish decorates the ridges of its circle with broken shells and gathers the finest sand into the very center.
- ✓The White-Spotted Pufferfish builds the whole design to impress a female, who lays her eggs in the soft sand at the middle if she likes it.
- ✓The White-Spotted Pufferfish abandons its finished masterpiece once breeding is over and starts building a brand new one.
You could line up about 11 of them along a 7-year-old!
The full story
For years, divers kept finding strange, perfectly geometric circles carved into the seafloor, and no one knew what was making them. The artist turned out to be a tiny pufferfish, barely five inches long. To build one, the male spends over a week swimming along the bottom, flapping his fins to sculpt a symmetrical pattern almost seven feet across, nearly twenty times his own body length. He decorates the ridges with broken shells and gathers the finest sand into the center. And it is all to impress a female. If she likes his design, she lays her eggs right in the middle, where the soft sand cushions them. Then he simply abandons his masterpiece and starts building a brand new one. Follow for more weird animal facts.
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“The White-Spotted Pufferfish is barely five inches long, yet builds a sand circle almost seven feet across, nearly twenty times its own body length.”
“The White-Spotted Pufferfish poops in perfect cube shapes.”
“The White-Spotted Pufferfish spends over a week swimming along the bottom, flapping its fins to sculpt a perfectly symmetrical pattern in the sand.”