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zoologic (zō- ə- ˈlä- jik) - relating to the properties and vital phenomena exhibited by an animal, animal type, or group.
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Why do animals evolve into different species? Why do they evolve to look or behave one way, and not another? Why do some animals have a few children, while others have many? What makes some animals better at surviving than others?

Zoologic is an exploration of these questions, and of forces that drive the evolution of life. It's a cellular automaton where small creatures ("crobes") compete for survival in a shared space, as their traits and reproductive strategies drift over time. Population dynamics and r/K selection theory play a role in their gradual evolution into new forms.

Life for the bacteria-like crobes is a simple affair. Each explores their world — a hexagonal grid  — according to their own pre-coded movement strategy. Each step requires a little bit of “energy,” the fuel that powers movement. Running out of energy means a crobe can’t move, but more energy can be obtained by consuming the only available food source — other crobes! Crobes can detect their neighbors within a couple of spaces, identify them as predators or prey, and react according to their needs.

Crobes consume each other for resources, then use those resources to reproduce -- but not perfectly. Each reproduction introduces new mutations, causing traits to change and new behaviors and appearances to emerge! The crobes’ neural nets learn over time, and only the fittest survive, making Zoologic an example of a neuroevolutionary algorithm. As neural nets are trained, they can be saved, loaded, and battled, shared with others. Train your crobes locally and compete with friends! Each output includes a fully on-chain, pre-trained neural net that has been generatively modified at the time of mint to give each set of crobes their own unique personality.

Key controls: [A] Fullscreen (press a second time for edge-to-edge animation), [H] Help menu, [I] AI menu, [Space] change color palette, [D] Toggle Dark mode, [F+#] Adjust framerate, [X+#/arrows] Adjust detail level, [N] restart animation with different random seed. Please see Help menu for a more comprehensive explanation of available controls and settings, including some intended for improved presentation for longer periods of time.

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Zoologic #249

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