123 players submitted a total of 556 species. Most players submitted just 1 species. One player submitted 11. (I disqualified his[1] 11ᵗʰ submission.) 555 species qualified for entry. I expected more players would submit 10 species compared to 8 or 9 in order to max out their submissions but that didn't happen.
The most popular name was Krill, which three separate people submitted. This does not count Yellow Krill, Green Krill, Red Krill, Nano-krill, Fornicacious Krill, Orange-Krill and Orange Krill.
Other duplicate names included Armadillo, Bear, Desert Tortoise, Forest Tribble, Kraken, Trash Panda and Flesh-Eating Clam.
A couple species were placed in the Tundra/Desert without the necessary temperature adaptations. I modified them so they wouldn't instantly die. Other people gave cold/heat adaptations to water-breathing species, which are useless. I left those unaltered.
Speaking of useless adaptations, Weapons + Armor is only useful up to 10. If your Weapons + Armor exceeds 10 the extra armor is useless. 40 submissions (7%) had Weapons + Armor more than 10. I think the idea here was to create big exciting powerful monsters. This is the realm of Dragons, Forest Dragons, Basilisks, Sandworms, White-Whales, Tundrus Rex, Humans, All-eating Leviathans and the so-called "Ultimate Lifeform". I expect[2] none of them will survive to the end.
I tried to render a food web but it didn't work because there were 54,867 connections. I let graphviz run for ten hours before putting it out of its misery.
Stats
One sixth of the entries were venomous. One third had antivenom.
Unlike their number of entries, many players did choose to max out weapons, armor and speed.
Spawning Locations
It makes sense that the ocean is popular because of how much food it supports. I was surprised by how popular the human garbage dump was. The Desert and Tundra were the least popular, presumably due to the temperature hazards.
Foraging
The most common foraging adaptations were algae, seeds and carrion.
- Algae is on top because there is the most algae.
- Seeds were popular because they offers lots of nutrition compared to the digestive adaptation.
- Carrion it is most nutritionally dense option.
Forage or Hunt?
Half of all organisms were pure foragers. Of the rest, the majority had a foraging adaptation. Only a tiny minority were specialized hunters.
Social Media
I promised link to the winners' social media accounts (if they want). Most went with Twitter. Some went with LinkedIn, Tumblr, personal websites and Less Wrong itself. Two picked Instagram.
Actually, is even worse than this. Weapons 5 + Armor 5 seems fine, but Weapons 8 + Armor 1 isstrictly better(assuming you wanted a successful predator).Basically, any Weapons + Armor >= 10 combination is dominated by another Weapons + Armor >= 10 combination having +3 Weapons and -4 Armor: same cost and same protection, but with more effective weapons.That said, I've submitted a Wurm with Weapons 6 + Armor 6 anyway, because my inner Dungeon Master kept saying "It's a sodding Wurm, it should have higher Armor Class!". Weapons 9 + Armor 2 on a giant desert predator seemed just wrong (can someone please provide real-world examples of such "low-armored" deadly predators?).
A phrasing I think would be accurate:
If Weapons + Armor is > 10 (not merely equal to 10), your organism is suboptimal.
There are two different things you could do to such an organism that would be strict improvements:
You could remove 1 Armor, saving size at no cost.
You could remove 4 Armor and add 3 Weapons, improving your predatory ability at zero net size cost.