Bloom Chamber
Spirans cameralisThis specimen does almost nothing until it is not alone. Left empty, the chamber sits dark and unremarkable. The moment someone steps inside and breathes, it opens.
Habitat
Requires an enclosed volume, dark walls, and exactly one visitor at a time; it does not perform for crowds and grows noticeably less responsive above two occupants, as if uncertain which breath to follow. Every installation to date has been dome-shaped, though nothing about the specimen requires this except, perhaps, its own preference.
Behavioral Traits
Tracks breath and small movement rather than sound, which makes it the quietest specimen in the collection and, by visitor accounts, the most unsettling. It blooms slowly on approach and folds back just as slowly on exit, never abruptly, as though it is trying not to startle whoever is inside it. Some visitors report matching their breathing to the pattern without meaning to.
Ecological Impact
Produces no crowd effect at all, and that appears to be the point. Where the louder specimens synchronise a room, this one isolates a single visitor from everyone else in the building for the length of one held breath. Several galleries have noted longer average dwell times in this chamber than in any other room in the show.