Digital Mutations Learn to Walk

If you ever wonder how life evolved (and keeps evolving) and made us what we are today, you'll certainly understand why so manu people enjoy playing with evolution rules in digital playgrounds, like the classic and simple "life", where bases on simple rules we can leave the computer evolve our digital guinea pigs.

Life is a simple, pixelized, project that may not show much, but when you use a 3D simulation package like Voxcad (its free and open-source, allowing you to do basically anything) things quickly get more interesting, Researchers decided to see how evolution would work by defining a set of different elements (acting as muscle, bone, etc.) and let it mutate over time. The winners would be the ones that could move fastest and further; and mutation would more likely be based on them than the others.

In the end, you get to see "walking" and "crawling" creatures not unlike some we have in nature.



[Evolving Soft Robots (PDF)]

Useless Body Parts

If you're a programmer like me, you've probably already come across source code that contains useless functions that are no longer needed.

Well, the human genetic code also has some of those useless "functions". From muscles that are no longer required (unless you want to move around like a monkey or wiggle your ears) to wisdom teeth, not even forgetting vestigial remains from even more primitive functions like a third eye lid and a reptilian neck rib, you can check all out here.

So, what was that issue about creationism vs evolution again? :)