Nobody is in charge.

• Initially, each of 4,000 cells has a 20% chance of holding 0.6 food units. Capacity is 1 unit per cell. Regrowth fills a fixed fraction of each cell’s empty capacity every tick.
• Every creature begins with 1.6 energy and moves at 0.45–0.85 cells per tick. Most turns favour food sensed two cells ahead; 15% are wandering turns. Creatures do not sense or help one another.
• A creature eats up to 0.1 food units per tick, converting food to energy at 80%. Moving costs 0.01 + 0.02 × speed² energy per tick.
• Above 3.2 energy, a creature pays 0.15 and splits the remainder with one offspring. Offspring inherit speed with a small random change, bounded to 0.3–1.0.
• Zero energy or age 900 ticks causes death. The field wraps horizontally and vertically. Feeding is processed in array order, which can affect competition.
• A computational cap of 800 can postpone births. The census records those blocked birth attempts. It is an implementation limit, not an ecological result.
• No predators, species, cooperation, or group roles are programmed. Clusters, if seen, can reflect shared food conditions. This toy model does not establish how a real ecosystem behaves.

Computed locally with the same rules. Three seeds per setting, 4,000 ticks per run. These are examples, not a statistical estimate. Reset seed 42 to reproduce a row.