Damir Marusic, The American Interest’s associate publisher and general web wizard, has created a Javascript version of my program Creatures which was described in the last post.  The web version has a smaller pond, lacks statistical information about the population, and the running dialogue of what’s happening in the pond (like the creatures meeting and having sex), but at least you can get an idea of what the simulation looks like.  It’ll run if you click here.  As in the full program, you can create more creatures by left-clicking anywhere in the pond.

You’ll notice that the creatures sometimes get trapped between two sources of food, like a donkey caught between two haystacks.  They almost always get liberated by another creature who comes along and eats one of the food sources.