  Experiments on quasistatic crack propagation in gelatin hydrogels reveal a
new branching instability triggered by wetting the tip opening with a drop of
aqueous solvent less viscous than the bulk one. We show that the emergence of
unstable branches results from a balance between the rate of secondary crack
growth and the rate of advection away from a non-linear elastic region of size
$\mathcal G/E$ where $\mathcal G$ is the fracture energy and $E$ the small
strain Young modulus. We build a minimal, predictive model that combines
mechanical characteristics of this mesoscopic region and physical features of
the process zone. It accounts for the details of the stability diagram and
lends support to the idea that non-linear elasticity plays a critical role in
crack front instabilities.
