Thursday, February 26, 2009

Emerging Behavior

At generation 84 and still thriving, the WolfPotato run is doing very well.. I think.

Over the last several generations, however, I have noticed some very odd behavior. The norns still breed a great deal, but it isn't environmental dangers that are keeping the population in check... it's that very few of the norns are passing the IQ test.

They seem to have developed some sort of group pacing behavior... in which all the norns gather in a single spot, walk one direction for a few paces (three to five), turn around, and walk the other direction, and continue this indefinitely, occasionally stopping to eat/breed/rest before continuing. This behavior is prevalent in the baby norns too-- so much so that they begin pacing right after birth, and keep pacing until they die of starvation.

Theorectically then, with norns who are so pacing obsessed that they never get back to the meso to eat or breed, this behavior should breed out soon, right? And yet it doesn't seem to be happening... this has been going on for at least 10 generations. Quite strange... but interesting nonetheless.

It's exclusively a group behavior... creatures left alone seem to go about their lives as normal, but when several of them gather in one spot, they start pacing back and forth, and then every norn that walks past them gets pulled into the pacing group too.

There are absolutely no norns in the bottom of the meso, and the banshees have taken to settling there, even breeding up their own generations. Since the norns have been too busy pacing to play with the learning machine, I have no idea what they're saying; maybe it would shed some light on what's going on in their brains.

1 comment:

  1. im mudpup101 from docking station, and im satisfied with ur blog ^^ i might start a wolfing run, could you maybe pm me the agents u use for ur wolfing runs i think it would help alot, i had to install my agents all over again and i cant find half of them :C maybe u could help?

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