Technosphere III

http://www.technosphere.org.uk

Technosphere is a computer generated biosphere whereby computer generated life-forms are created, by WWW users and are left to eat, sleep, interact, and do what computer generated life-forms do.

The programme is an online demonstration of evolution in progress. Users have the selection of a carnivore or herbivore to create. You can select their attributes, such as head, body, locomotion and the eyes. This animal is then released into the computer generated environment where it is left to fend for itself.

Depending which environment it is placed in and what attributes you have given your herbivore, or carnivore will give its chances of survival, and thus its probability of sustained familial lineage.

Don't be surprised that all of your creatures die with-in a few days (especially the herbivores) that is just life. I am not aware of any limitations upon the number of animals you can create but I have left myself with a modest two animals alive at one time. You get, on average, an E-mail a day once it starts interacting with its environment. Chases, kills, and the most important.... copulation!

The creature you create will send you regular E-mails on its progress (and who said animals were dumb). You will toast the day when  your animal starts to breed and have offspring. The offspring will have random selections of the attributes of the two animals which copulated, therefore you get another animal to monitor.

It is both an experiment and an intelligence test. What attributes would suit a carnivore and herbivore? Test your own hypotheses out and see. There are over 100 combinations you can choose from.

All in all, quite an entertaining break from work, keeping an eye on your animal. Perhaps you, and your intelligent choices, will conspire to get your animal onto the leader board? Will it be for the most children? The fastest? The angriest? It is entirely up to you to design your animal for these characteristics.

Enjoy!