French artist Hubert Duprat is an exploitative type. Fortunately, he likes to exploit insects, and even more fortunately, he’s not really exploiting them at all. What he is doing however, is conning the Caddisfly to make some sculptures for him. This moth-like insect creates a protective silk case for its pupation state, from which it emerges with wings, like a butterfly. But it likes to decorate this case with things it finds in its environment. These are usually small rocks, sand, pieces of twigs, etc. Hubert used this behaviour and placed Caddisfly larvae in tanks that contained nothing but jewels: gold flakes, pearls, and precious stones. So obviously, the little Caddisfly had no choice but to do its thing with the materials at hand, and built Mr. Duprat some art, which he then displayed, presumably for profit.
There’s a bunch of talk about the artistry behind the work, and probably the meaning of it all. But we’re not going to lie, we don’t really care, we just saw this and thought: neat! So there you have it.
Hit the jump for links and a video of Hubert talking about this, and some insects working hard.
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