Who Wants to Live a Million Years: Analysis of a Natural Selection Simulation

1. It took me 4 generations to win a game. It probably took this long because I needed to get used to the process so I would know what to do when the land changed. It took me 3 generations to figure out that to have fur, they needed the fur on top of their heads also. For most real species on earth this means that it takes a lot to survive. There may be periods when they almost die out, and it is mostly based on luck. Even when I got to choose the adaptations, I still lost.
2. When if I first played the game, I chose mostly randomly because I didn’t know how it worked. I chose a striped tall, and one green, one red short. Over time I realized that a variety of phenotypes would help me survive, so I changed so that the phenotypes that I selected at the start of the game were usually two long legged- one skinny and one fat, one striped and one colored, and one short-fat and furry. Having this variety allowed me to survive because the great range allowed me to almost always have at least one creature that would be fine in the new environment. I found that some phenotypes were dominant over others, such as fatness, so I needed only one rather than two.
3. Yes, this population of creatures would be greatly affected by genetic drift because if there was a change in allele frequencies that was for an unnecessary gene at the time, and then there was a change that made that allele necessary, that would be very bad for that species. Evidence of genetic drift in the game is when randomly the traits change, even when I did not add in a mutation.
4. The dominant alleles are tall, fur, and fat or normal size, and I could tell because those traits were most likely to continue as the years went on, when other traits would disappear. The recessive traits were skinny, short, and hairless, because they would eventually fade out as the other traits became more useful. If it ever got too hot, I had to add in a skinny one because they couldn’t stay on their own.
5. A. With cold conditions, the creature would need to adapt to have fur on their heads and be fat, usually it would fine if they were still tall.

    B. With hot conditions, they needed to adapt to be tall, skinny, and furless so they wouldn’t overheat.

    C. With a large predator, they had to be striped to camouflage (although it wasn’t always necessary), and had to be tall so they could run away.

    D. With tall food, they needed to be tall also so they could reach the food.

6. To more realistically represent natural selection and evolution, I would improve the game in several ways. One way would be to show more change over time in the creatures - even though they did change, they were still the same basic creature the whole game, whereas in the reality of evolution, creatures today barely have traces of their common ancestor. I would also change how there was a hints book. part of it is necessary to make people play the game, but in reality there is no saying what each change will affect. It is also random in real life, so knowing what the adaptations do isn’t all that helpful. And lastly, I would add it more traits, to make a more realistic example of what traits could change and end up as. It is not as black and white as the game makes it seem, some things kind of blend together.