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Article: My ant could paint that! ; What invertebrates' creations tell us about art
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- September 6, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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While compiling images for a guidebook to invertebrates and their
tracks, Western Massachusetts-based biologist Noah Charney began
entertaining an unscientific notion. Looking at the complicated
patterns created by bees as they excised circular patches from
leaves, the delicate arrangement of tiny hatchmarks made by a slug
chewing its way across an algae-covered branch, or the radiating
paths marking the progress of beetles through the bark of a fallen
log, he made an observation: it looked like the bugs were making
art.
We're often helpless (even those of us, like Charney, with a
master's degree in biology) against a tendency to anthropomorphize
nature: we're forever seeing rock formations ...