I Know Why Carnivores Are Less Likely to Survive

[CharChar]

Hypothesis

Random mutations are random and attacking herbivores to create meat requires finding them (hearing or seeing). Because prey animals have limitless potential and zero-opportunity cost to changing their color to one of [~255] options, predators are extremely unlikely to evolve the correct set of eyes and color-seeking instinct to identify and attack potential prey. If a predator starves before giving birth, it does not allow the line additional chances to make the correct adaption.

Assumptions

Hypothetical Scenario
First, assumptions about the hypothetical scenario must be established:

• This hypothesis is only applicable to obligate carnivores that do not use the instincts, "If I see meat, move towards it" and "If I see egg, move towards it" are not enabled.
  
• This argument is made under the assumption that random mutation is enabled.
  
• This argument is made under the assumption that a large and stable ecosystem consisting of Producers and Tier 1 Consumers is established where a carnivore will never spend long enough away from potential prey to starve, provided that it could hear or see said prey.

Ecosystems
Assumptions about the ecosystems in The Sapling are as follows:

1. The population of an herbivorous species is determined by the density of plants and how many are needed to sustain one organism as the quotient of the total continuous area of the map which is not actively hostile (too hot, too cold, spike-less plants) to a species.
   
2. The population of a carnivore that does not attack herbivores is limited by how often meat is available due to death from natural causes. The availability of eggs is not considered because carnivores do not seem to discriminate their eggs from others. Thus, it is a high-risk strategy compared to not using the "see egg, move towards egg" instinct.

Supporting Logic

Color-Seeking Instincts
Eyes are dead weight on predators which rely on color-seeking instinct to hunt and attack prey.
Random mutations are random and attacking herbivores to create meat requires finding them (hearing or seeing). Predators that use "move towards [color_000–255]" are significantly less likely to find prey because if a prey animal changes its color, the predator must first randomly generate a change in color-seeking behavior and change the color to one of an available prey species. There are 255 possible adaptions (one-dimensional spectrum), and the predator can a percentage of these based on the eyes. There is no limiting factor on which colors a prey species can adapt, but predator is limited to the colors it can see. If a prey species adapts to a color it cannot see, then the predator must evolve eyes that can see in the correct end of the spectrum and randomly select for the correct color. If the predator chooses to seek a color that does not correspond with any existing in the prey population, the predator will die before it can give birth to a new generation, thus adaption becomes impossible even if its eyes could see a prey animal. Again, there is no limit on which colors a prey animal can evolve.

Sound-Seeking Instincts
Predators which rely on sound-seeking instincts to survive prey are much more likely to survive long enough to find meat and reproduce.
Unlike color, sound is much more limited in range, and is multi-dimensional, meaning that ears can notice calls and sounds created by movement. Additionally, changes to mouth parts and appendages are less likely, as a solution that works well is less likely to be randomly removed from all prey species in an area barring a change in predator speed or food availability [for prey animals (edible plants)]. This is the most reliable method of finding prey if prey animals are not short-lived animals with short reproduction cycles and the "move towards meat" instinct is not enabled.

Solutions

Seeking Colors Within Range
Instincts seeking color should apply to a specific range of colors rather than a color, itself.
Currently, a predator will seek a color (number) between [1] and [255] (assumption; not verified). If the prey animal changes the color, the predator will starve if it cannot find more prey of the same color. If, however, the color-seeking behavior applied to a range of colors—such as "greenish things," "brownish things," "ultraviolet things"—then the predator species will have more time to adapt to a prey species changing colors because not all prey species change colors at once and predators which start looking for "greenish yellow" instead of "green" will find more food and their offspring will adapt to the new color of food.

Nectarivores
The flower-seeking behavior of nectarivores is not under the same pressures.
Unlike prey-predator relationships, plants are incentivized to maintain the same color for bio-luminescent flowers because it increases the chance of pollination, and thus, mutation over great distances, while nectarivores that do not seek the correct type of flower will starve. Thus, the adaptions and goals of these species are aligned.

Scent
The implementation of olfactory senses ought to be done as quickly as possible.
Using scent, a predator could identify "feathers," "fur," or "scales" within a given area and seek these for hunting. The range would be shorter than hearing or sight but would be much less likely to become completely obsolete. This could coincide with poison and venom that specifically affects creatures with one of these three traits.

[The Humane Centipede]

I've noticed often in these kinds of evolution simulators, predation has difficulty evolving, despite how common it is in real life. Species: ALRE has a similar issue.
It makes me wonder what nuanced factors must exist in real life that makes predators so common, but isn't being replicated in these simulations.

[CharChar]

Originally posted by The Humane Centipede:

It makes me wonder what nuanced factors must exist in real life that makes predators so common, but isn't being replicated in these simulations.

Predators are usually smarter than their prey because they need it to hunt them. More instinct would help. More available than 4

[The Humane Centipede]

Originally posted by CharChar:

Originally posted by The Humane Centipede:

It makes me wonder what nuanced factors must exist in real life that makes predators so common, but isn't being replicated in these simulations.

Predators are usually smarter than their prey because they need it to hunt them. More instinct would help. More available than 4

I'm not sure how much that really applies here since self-preservation instincts seem to take a backseat to just sheer numbers in this sim

I actually managed to get a predator to survive a good long while, and it only died out when it wiped out small herbivores in its area. just a bog standard t-rex looking thing. it was an exception though, havent been able to recreate the circumstances

[Wessel]

Wow CharChar, I rarely see suggestions for the game that are so well written, awesome and super impressive analysis.

If I understand things correctly, this is more or less about a future where eatings eggs, older meat and fresh meat is no longer merged in one mouth type; without making promises, this is indeed a direction I'm considering. If I can paraphrase, the main point is that fresh meat eating alone is not going to be viable with random mutations turned on, as it requires the predators to rely on instincts.... but prey animals will simply change colors and the predators will likely go extinct before their instincts can catch up. I didn't think through this scenario yet, but I think it is very likely that this is exactly what will happen.

I think I like a solution with 'less precise' instincts the best, like your color range suggestion. Another 'less precise' instinct could be an instinct to just go towards other animals (maybe of a specific size instead of a color?), and perhaps this could function as a second backup instinct in case the first one doesn't fire. Curious for your view on this.

Some specific responses:

Currently, a predator will seek a color (number) between [1] and [255]

It's actually a float between 0 and 1, and if I'm not mistaken an organism counts as a trigger if it's within 0.05 units from the chosen color. While this is a small range, I think in practice it is so small that what you predict will happen.

The availability of eggs is not considered because carnivores do not seem to discriminate their eggs from others.

You mean carnivores eat their own eggs? This is what I originally tried, but this lead to a loop of (1) laying an egg, (2) eating an egg and with that collecting energy, (3) reaching the threshold to get pregnant. That is carnivores laid lots of eggs, but always only had 1 child: the one that hatched after the death of the parent.

I've noticed often in these kinds of evolution simulators, predation has difficulty evolving, despite how common it is in real life.

I read somewhere that the Artifical Life research community has the same problems. One important problem is that carnivores often emerge, find food quickly and thus rapidly reproduce, exhaust their food supply way too fast, and go extinct again. I've solved this by keeping predator populations small artificially.

Another hypothesis that I have is that there currently are no omnivore mouths in the game that could function as an in-between step, and give new species some time to acquire the necessary instincts.

[CharChar]

Thank you so much for your aknowledgement!

Originally posted by Wessel:

I rarely see suggestions for the game that are so well written

Your understanding of my argument is on point.

Originally posted by Wessel:

If I understand things correctly, this is more or less about a future where eatings eggs, older meat and fresh meat is no longer no longer merged in one mouth type; without making promises, this is indeed a direction I'm considering.

While we're on the subject, I have questions about nutritional value and catagorization of animal products.

1. Are fresh meat and carrion categorized differently in the game?
   
   1. If yes, does fresh meat have more nutritional value than older meat?
      
   2. How do eggs compare to meat in terms of energy density?
      
   3. Does the size of animal affect the energy density of meat?
      
2. What happens if a creature satiates its appetite but more food is available?
   
   1. If something happens, what happens?
      
   2. If nothing happens, new mechanics are presented.
      
      1. Excess energy could be converted to fat, satisfying food upon the next energy deficit.
         
      2. Energy can be converted to additional offspring.
         

Originally posted by Wessel:

. . . the main point is that fresh meat eating alone is not be viable with random mutations turned on, as it requires the predators to rely on instincts.... but prey animals will simply change colors and the predators will likely go extinct before their instincts can catch up.

Yes, this seems to be the case, but with some recently discovered caveats. First, rapid changes in color occur much more frequently when biodiversity is high; predators seem to do okay if random mutation is enabled, provided they begin with the instict to seek a specific color and all prey species are of the same color. In other words, low biodiversity in the prey population increases the predators' rate of succesful reproduction and lowers the rate of child-mortality. I don't have specific numbers on this, as my GPU cannot handle instances with plentiful forests of short-cycle plants, so testing I have conducted has been within very constrained scenarios.

Originally posted by Wessel:

I think a solution with 'less precise' instincts, like your color range suggestion, the best. Another 'less precise' instinct could be an instinct to just go towards other animals (maybe of a specific size instead of a color?), and perhaps this could function as a second backup instinct in case the first one doesn't fire. Curious for your view on this.

Yes, I think this would work, but I'd like to extend this idea, using a taxonomic hierarchy [a feature which needs a proper UI component that [i]only[/i] displays living species while also identifying those with a natural-born count equal to zero]. Rather than—or in addition to—looking for variations in color, sound, size, skin, or even smell, allowing insticts to identify animals within a genus, family, order, or class has much greater potential, as instincts would be able to broadly identify a number of species by how closely they match within a certain parameter.

This parameter would be how much taxonomic vertical and horizontal distance separates two species.

• Vertical Distance (𝐲). 𝐲 is always an integer and cannot be greater than, equal to, or less than [0]. If 𝐲 is less than zero, the taxonomic rank is literally higher on the taxonomic chart. If 𝐲 is greater than zero, the taxomic rank is literally higher on the taxonomic chart.
  
  1. [parent-species] or [child-species] = 0𝐲 ± 1𝐲
     
  2. [grandparent-species] or [grandchild-species] = 0𝐲 ± 2𝐲
     
  3. [great-grandparent-species] or [great-grandchild-species] = 0𝐲 ± 3𝐲
     
• Horizontal Distance (𝐱): 𝐱 is always an integer and cannot be greater than, equal to, or less than zero. If 𝐱 is less than zero.
  
  1. [cousin-species] = 0x+1x
     
  2. [second-cousin-species] = 0x+2x
     
  3. [third-cousin-species] = 0x+3x
     

I realize this became complicated very quickly, so to visualize this, I will introduce the concepts of 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

• 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
  
  • The 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐚) of the first 𝐀nimal ever introduced is represented as {𝐚 = 𝐀(0𝐱,0𝐲)} and the 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of the first 𝐏lant would represnted as {𝐚 = 𝐏(0𝐱,0𝐲)}.
    
  • If they produce two child-species, the 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of their first children would be represented as {𝐚 = 𝐀(0𝐱,1𝐲)} and {𝐚 = 𝐏(0𝐱,1𝐲)}, respectively.
    
  • The 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of their second children would be represented as {𝐚 = 𝐀(1𝐱,1𝐲)} and {𝐚 = 𝐏(1𝐱,1𝐲)}, respectively.
    
• The 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐫) of a species is calculated by the subtracting the 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of subject species from the 𝐀𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of the species to which the former is being compared. When representing 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, the "𝐀" or "𝐏" is dropped because an 𝐀nimal can never share any relation with a 𝐏lant because no common ancestor could exist. This is one of the few times that apples literally cannot be compared to oranges. 😅
  
  • The 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐫) of the first 𝐀nimal's first child 𝐫elative its second is represented as {𝐫 = 1𝐱} because {𝐀(1𝐱+1𝐲) – 𝐀(0𝐱+1𝐲) = 𝐀𝐱}.
    
  • The 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of the first 𝐀nimal's first child 𝐫elative its second child's first-child's third child is represented as {𝐫 = (2𝐱+2𝐲)} because {𝐀(2𝐱+3𝐲) – 𝐀(0𝐱+1𝐲) = 𝐀(2𝐱+2𝐲)}.
    

Thus, when a creature wants to insticts to trigger on animals or plants within its same species, a query identifying matches is as follows: =IF(and(𝐱=0,𝐲=0),TRUE,FALSE). Using different example, when a creature wants to trigger insticts on animals or plants within a species of its cousin-order, a query identifying matches is as follows: =IF(and(or(𝐱≥0,𝐲=-3),TRUE,FALSE)

𝒲𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝐼 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈, 𝐼 𝒹𝒾𝒹 𝓃𝑜𝓉 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝐼 𝓌𝑜𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝑒𝓃𝒹 𝓊𝓅 𝒹𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽. 𝐼 𝒶𝓅𝑜𝓁𝑜𝑔𝒾𝓏𝑒, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝐼 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝓂𝒾𝓈𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 #𝓘𝓽𝓗𝓾𝓻𝓽𝓜𝓮𝓜𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓘𝓽𝓗𝓾𝓻𝓽𝓼𝓨𝓸𝓾.

Math tangents out of the way, a species that only attacks animals of a specific size could attack animals which are too dangerous, impossible to catch, or within the same species, so if you do nothing else, please include negative statements as possible queries in the instinct-logic. These would be things like, "𝙳𝚘 𝙽𝙾𝚃 [𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚔] 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 [𝚋𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛] 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗 [𝚜𝚒𝚣𝚎]" or "𝙾𝙽𝙻𝚈 [𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚜] 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 [𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍] 𝚒𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚖𝚊𝚕 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 [𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚛]."

Originally posted by Wessel:

It's actually a float between 0 and 1, and if I'm not mistaken an organism counts as a trigger if it's within 0.05 units from the chosen color. While this is a small range, I think in practice it is so small that what you predict will happen.

I think that if you increase this range to somewhere between 0.13 and 0.17, you'll be able to cover what most people would consider a "color." Within the visible spectrum, I can tell you that it is ~0.17, but I'm not sure how much of the IR spectrum and UV spectrum you've included relative to the visible spectrum.

As a side-note, I think that the colors of animals should be less vibrant than they are until they move into the IR and UV spectrums, where they begin to glow deep red or vibrant purple, with the amount of luminoscity depended on how far into either spectrum they are. I think this is much more intuitive for players because we're accustomed to seeing IR as "red-hot" when it an object emits so much radiation that bleeds into the visible spectrum and because the term, "ultraviolet," is usually represented as a glow on lenses which can pick up light in those shorter wavelengths.

Originally posted by Wessel:

Originally posted by CharChar:

The availability of eggs is not considered because carnivores do not seem to discriminate their eggs from others.

You mean carnivores eat their own eggs? This is what I originally tried, but this lead to an loop of (1) laying an egg, (2) eating an egg and with that collecting energy, (3) reaching the threshold to get pregnant. That is carnivores laid lots of eggs, but always only had 1 child: the one that hatched after the death of the parent.

Oh, my mistake; I did not know you hard-coded this out of possibility, but I'm glad you did.

Originally posted by Wessel:

Originally posted by Wessel:

I've noticed often in these kinds of evolution simulators, predation has difficulty evolving, despite how common it is in real life.

I read somewhere that the Artifical Life research community has the same problems. One important problem is that carnivores often emerge, find food quickly and thus rapidly reproduce, exhaust their food supply way too fast, and go extinct again. I've solved this by keeping predator populations small artificially.

How are you keeping it small, exactly? I believe you've said that predators automatically attack anything smaller than they are, but if everything smaller than they are is slower and with worse hearing, sight, or poorly-developed "move-away-insticts," then I can see why they would kill an entire population.

I think a more elegant solution to whatever you're using exists, which is also reflected in nature: ᴀɴɪᴍᴀʟꜱ, ᴋɪʟᴏ-ꜰᴏʀ-ᴋɪʟᴏ, ᴀʀᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴇɴᴇʀɢʏ-ᴅᴇɴꜱᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴘʟᴀɴᴛꜱ. Using a fairly extrme example, "a 3-ounce, 85-gram portion of sirloin steak has 25 grams of protein, or 100 calories from protein. The same serving size of lettuce has 1 gram of protein, providing 4 calories," (Rainey, 2022). In application, this means that predators need to kill prey less often—provided that they do not hunt if hunger is not below a certain value—and are more likely to find prey before they starve. Using this new mechanic would necessitate the implimentation of a fat-mechanic or some other method of converting excess energy into survival-utility or reproductive-utility.

Originally posted by Wessel:

Another hypothesis that I have is that there currently are no omnivore mouths in the game that could function as an in-between step, and give new species some time to acquire the necessary instincts.

Yes, but that would not solve the original problem; because jaws with lots of teeth increase the incubation period, that trait would be selected against very aggressively, compared to a more specialized—and likely, herbivorous—mouth.

I'd love to pick this conversation up; do you have a Discord where people make this a more collaborative discussion? I suspect that the people who have purchased this game are into this very niche genre and enjoy the theoretical aspect quite a lot more than the actual practice; designing system-models is so much fun!

References

Rainey, A. (2022, January 3). Which Gives You More Energy, Meat or Vegetables? (LIVESTRONG) Retrieved January 5, 2022, from LiveStrong.com: https://www.livestrong.com/article/547226-which-gives-you-more-energy-meat-or-vegetables/

[MultiDavid]

Originally posted by Wessel:

Wow CharChar, I rarely see suggestions for the game that are so well written, awesome and super impressive analysis.

If I understand things correctly, this is more or less about a future where eatings eggs, older meat and fresh meat is no longer no longer merged in one mouth type; without making promises, this is indeed a direction I'm considering. If I can paraphrase, the main point is that fresh meat eating alone is not be viable with random mutations turned on, as it requires the predators to rely on instincts.... but prey animals will simply change colors and the predators will likely go extinct before their instincts can catch up. I didn't think through this scenario yet, but I think it is very likely that this is exactly what will happen.

I think a solution with 'less precise' instincts, like your color range suggestion, the best. Another 'less precise' instinct could be an instinct to just go towards other animals (maybe of a specific size instead of a color?), and perhaps this could function as a second backup instinct in case the first one doesn't fire. Curious for your view on this.

Some specific responses:

Currently, a predator will seek a color (number) between [1] and [255]

It's actually a float between 0 and 1, and if I'm not mistaken an organism counts as a trigger if it's within 0.05 units from the chosen color. While this is a small range, I think in practice it is so small that what you predict will happen.

The availability of eggs is not considered because carnivores do not seem to discriminate their eggs from others.

You mean carnivores eat their own eggs? This is what I originally tried, but this lead to an loop of (1) laying an egg, (2) eating an egg and with that collecting energy, (3) reaching the threshold to get pregnant. That is carnivores laid lots of eggs, but always only had 1 child: the one that hatched after the death of the parent.

I've noticed often in these kinds of evolution simulators, predation has difficulty evolving, despite how common it is in real life.

I read somewhere that the Artifical Life research community has the same problems. One important problem is that carnivores often emerge, find food quickly and thus rapidly reproduce, exhaust their food supply way too fast, and go extinct again. I've solved this by keeping predator populations small artificially.

Another hypothesis that I have is that there currently are no omnivore mouths in the game that could function as an in-between step, and give new species some time to acquire the necessary instincts.

Wouldn't artificially low predator populations end up with less mutations and thus less prone to adapt to changes, while the larger (in number) types of herbivores would be able to adapt fast enough to dodge whatever Instinct the Carnivore has that allows them to hunt it ?

The herbivores could at that point either: Adapt into dodging the Carnivore's Instinct, be it ears or eyes. Or just develop some of the stronger herbivore mouths and inflict enough deaths onto the shallow carnivore population that recovery winds up being impossible.

Additionally, without the ability for there to be a sort of reliable source of "carnivore mutations" (as the aforementioned omnivore mouths could do), any drop in the number of herbivores on the map, especially ones that can be hunted by the low number and relatively stale (mutation wise) carnivores could easily wipe them out. Spikes in this last aspect tend to depopulate entire areas of the map, which then drastically reduces herbivore numbers, which then drastically reduces the amount of eggs/carrion on the map, and so on, so forth.

I would recommend just overall having larger numbers of more sustainable carnivores as the faster solution (which would also come in handy for omnivores).

More Carnivores = More Mutations = Less Unstable Population = Less Prone to going immediately extinct the moment the herbivore develops any kind of defense against it.

[The Humane Centipede]

I feel like its also worth considering that species going extinct is part of the natural selection process

if carnivores wipes out the local herbivores and starve to death, well, they were reproducing too fast, a less virile carnivore would have survived longer

[Wessel]

Are fresh meat and carrion categorized differently in the game?

Nope, and as a result at the moment there is not a clear reason for animals to kill their own prey, as there usually is a lot of meat laying around. A solution here could be to make older inedible or even toxic (except for some special scavenger mouths), but a downside would be that it's even more unlikely for carnivores to evolve spontaneously.

How do eggs compare to meat in terms of energy density?

Does the size of animal affect the energy density of meat?

I will look this up later to be sure, but from the top of my head: at the moment only the mouth determines how much energy you get from eating, not the food. So whether you're eating a small egg or a giant piece of meat, it's always the same. I can see why you're asking though :).

What happens if a creature satiates its appetite but more food is available?

At the moment there is no sexual reproduction for animals, so the amount of food collected directly influences pregnancy: once an animal has eaten enough, it turns this energy into offspring. Once the child is born, the parent starts eating again to produce the next one.

my GPU cannot handle instances with plentiful forests

Sorry to read that; every patch is a little more optimized than the one before, so perhaps in the future it will!

instincts would be able to broadly identify a number of species by how closely they match within a certain parameter.

Wow, thanks for such a detailed investigation into family relations of species! A reason I didn't add specific (families of) animal species as instinct triggers so far, is because I was thinking (1) unlike its appearance, there is no way for a prey animal to change its family, and (2) this takes away the incentive for looking like an unrelated species (mimicry). Curious how you think that would work with your suggestion.

How are you keeping it small, exactly?

If I'm not mistaken, predators only give birth if their population size is below a threshold. This is a dirty hack, but the only way I could make predators work.

I think a more elegant solution to whatever you're using exists, which is also reflected in nature: ᴀɴɪᴍᴀʟꜱ, ᴋɪʟᴏ-ꜰᴏʀ-ᴋɪʟᴏ, ᴀʀᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴇɴᴇʀɢʏ-ᴅᴇɴꜱᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴘʟᴀɴᴛꜱ.

I've seen other players suggest this as well: predators in real life spend a lot of their time laying around and doing nothing and only hunt every now and then. In the current simulation, however, this wouldn't work because of the direct relation between eating and reproducing. I feel like there is an obvious solution to this to make it work in the game, but I haven't reached it yet.

I'd love to pick this conversation up; do you have a Discord where people make this a more collaborative discussion? I suspect that the people who have purchased this game are into this very niche genre and enjoy the theoretical aspect quite a lot more than the actual practice; designing system-models is so much fun!

Not an active Discord user myself, but there is a Discord server run by a fan here: https://discord.com/invite/k9BVvJV3wR

[Wessel]

Wouldn't artificially low predator populations end up with less mutations and thus less prone to adapt to changes, while the larger (in number) types of herbivores would be able to adapt fast enough to dodge whatever Instinct the Carnivore has that allows them to hunt it ?

I think so, yes! Indeed a problem.

More Carnivores = More Mutations = Less Unstable Population = Less Prone to going immediately extinct the moment the herbivore develops any kind of defense against it.

I see your point, but you need multiple prey animals to feed one predator. By making predator populations larger, only extremely large prey populations are viable when there is a predator around; the rest will simply go extinct (and take the predators with them).

I feel like its also worth considering that species going extinct is part of the natural selection process

Haha true, but at least there should be SOME ways to create stable predators ;).

[The Humane Centipede]

I see your point, but you need multiple prey animals to feed one predator. By making predator populations larger, only extremely large prey populations are viable when there is a predator around; the rest will simply go extinct (and take the predators with them).

maybe making meat a more efficient food source somehow would help?
maybe depending on the size of the animal that dies, they could leave behind more meat piles. the smallest size drops one, the next size up drops two, etc

perhaps making the starter mouth omnivorous and allowing it to branch into carnivorous or herbivorous mouths could help too

[Wessel]

maybe making meat a more efficient food source somehow would help?

Yeah, as a result of your comment I started thinking in that direction too. A challenge there would be that adding more energy per carnivore meal would probably lead to carnivores being able to reproduce faster instead of what we want (carnivores needing fewer meals per lifetime, so we can have more). I guess the solution can be something like a cooldown period after giving birth... if a carnivore then collects enough energy for another child, but is not ready to give birth yet, she just lays down to save energy, like you see animals like lions do all the time.

[The Humane Centipede]

yeah, if meat and plants are nutritionally the same, there's no incentive to be a carnivore since there will always be more plants than meat. There's gotta be some benefit to eating meat over plants, or else carnivores just wont emerge.

balancing the pros and cons of different evolutionary strategies to make a diverse ecosystem is the tricky part

[CharChar]

Apparently, simulating the development of predation is very difficult for any evolution simulator.

[Wessel]

Fun fact: in that video, when he shows the social media discussion, my tweet is also visible ;)

[einstein20202]

Originally posted by Wessel:

Fun fact: in that video, when he shows the social media discussion, my tweet is also visible ;)

Wich one are you?
btw, I managed to let the sapling and the bibites to run at the same time :)