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nemo-ramjet — Evolution in Action
Published: 2005-07-21 15:58:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 19358; Favourites: 203; Downloads: 394
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Description
This is an evolutionary simulation for 8 generations of hypothethical, pixel-based creatures. Notice how the complexity increases exponentially with each generation, and how wildly different lines branch of from common ancestors.Related content
Comments: 82
Following up on my last comment, my one criticism is that the lines linking creatures can be a bit hard to follow, due to how tightly packed they are in places. I put more space between them, maybe make them thicker and choose a color that more sharply contrasts the background.
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Very cool! I'm pretty interested in speculative biology and evolution, so I love your works. This is different, but still does a great job illustrating some of the concepts of evolution.
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This looks like something that could be in Flatworld. I love it so much.
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This is, to put it simply: Inspiring!
When you created this, did you have a particular process for thinking up variants?
This actually works as a good argument for cladism (cladistics?); imagine how different this chart would look if you had just had the various organisms and fossils, and you needed to group them based on similar phenotypes.
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I had no particular process for the mutations, I just looked at particular features and thought about which ones I could exaggerate and/or twist
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When I have time, I'm going to build a quick game prototype based on evolution, pass it your way and convince you to part with the PSD for this set.
Then they will live.
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I can gladly give away the document for free - send me a note!
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Yes, it's among my favorite genres!
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Numbers 26,27 and 28 on the bottom row look like armless Blumbomen!
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It's hard to put into words how amazing this is. It makes me feel my mind is too dim to articulate the brilliance of this piece.
This makes me wish there was a program that could run such simulated evolutions to come with endless variations of form.
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Thanks, these are really encouraging words, coming from you.
Programming something like this wouldn't be impossible - you'd need a basic algorithm like Dawkins' "biomorphs" program, with inheritance patterns attributed to stroke length, curve, curve angles, zig-zag-points per line, etc. Damn, I wish I knew how to code!
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Even then you'd run into the same problem that Dawkins underlines about the Blind Watchmaker program: to get things like this, you would almost certainly need a conscious mind guiding selection to get something recognizable.
I don't think it would be impossible to write a fitness function or even simulate interaction, but you'd almost certainly run into genes that would game the system and end up with creatures that looked more like Missing No.
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Alternatively, you could take the Darwinbots approach where there are certain generally recognizable things, limbs, horns, claws, eyes, whatever, that count as discrete tools and have their own subgenomes, so that anything evolving will have them in variation, but will have a limited set of options to choose from. Runs into the opposite problem of the above method, creating more relatable, more easily understandable creatures but lowers the odds of the paradigm shift type mutations that open up whole new areas (i.e. land), since they would have to be usefully built from atomic tools rather than emerging from much smaller parts.
P.S. Apologies to anyone whose knowledge of Darwinbots tells them this post is a misrepresentation, they are almost certainly right.
P.P.S. I still find either idea, or someone else's better idea fascinating, and would gladly help any group who wanted to create an evolution game/program/simulator.
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Just taking a stroll back through your gallery. I keep mentally returning to this and to the typographic evolution piece, especially.
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the simplistic look of it is charming and the complexity of the work once the viewer dwells in deeper is astounding nicely done ^^
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Good 'ol Microsoft Paint!
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i wish that they had an ipod app for natural selection like this
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i found something like this but its with plants, its cool but it gets boring after a while cause its just trees
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Are you talking about the Blind Watchmaker/Biomorph apps? That uses a tree structure because their symmetrical and easy for Dawkins to program. That being said, they can actually create quite a few things that look much less like trees than one would expect. The problem is that most biomorph apps make you start in some basic tree like state, and it can take a while to reach anything novel looking.
[link] is a good because it has a "random" button that gives you a bunch of wildly different examples, so you can get out of the tree-like parts of biomorph space quickly. I don't actually know if you can post links in comments, if not just google: "rennard biomorph viewer".
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oh right, I've been seeing links almost every other comment, now I feel somewhat silly.
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I'm glad for you that there's not much religious flame occuring here.
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I'm pretty sure that I've killed some of these in "Gex" on the "Game Boy Colour though. But either way... This is a great idea and it is well pulled off of too though! And you put up a nice message there to the Creationists too! ^_____^.
I'd say that... I love it! lol. 
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Thank you so much! These would make great "Space invaders" indeed.
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I've seen this thing from when I first discovered you and your works. It is a rather cute, if not cartoonish, demonstration of divergence from evolution. I am particularly fond of the one that resembles the prehistoric jawless fish, Astraspis.
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Wait a minute... it looks more like Odontogriphus. But it still kind of reminds me of a prehistoric jawless fish.
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Now why did I put that emoticon in my post?
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