Bug's Autumn Colony

A small forest. Tiny lives. Select a beetle and watch the undergrowth react.
WORLD
AN OPEN-ENDED ECOSYSTEM
✦ food   • egg   × remains

AUTUMN COLONY / A LIVING EXPERIMENT

A little world.
A life of its own.

Watch a colony of beetles make a home in an autumn forest. They wander, find food, spend energy, lay eggs and pass their traits to the next generation.

Hatchlings start small and grow into adults. After death, their bodies stay in the forest and slowly return to the soil. Every beetle has its own genome. Sometimes a mutation changes its colour, shell pattern, horns, wings, size or speed. Lives end, new ones begin, and the colony keeps changing.

Moons measure a beetle's fictional age. Tokens are food energy, not money or cryptocurrency.

Select a beetle to read its story. Use the arrow keys to cycle through the colony. Pause time or speed it up whenever you like.

This is an experimental simulation, not a scientific model. It runs while this page is open. Reloading starts a fresh world; if the colony dies out, new founders arrive.

We use one preference cookie to remember that you have read this introduction for one year. You can reopen it from “About the project”. If cookies are blocked or cleared, it will appear again.