Digital critters shed light on sleep evolution

摘要

Digital "organisms" that learn to sleep when energy is scarce and harvest it when it's abundant could help explain why sleep evolved in animals. The lifelike programs might also make gadgets more energy efficient. To simulate early life forms, Benjamin Beckman and colleagues at Michigan State University in East Lansing created 3600 self-replicating digital organisms each with its own refillable energy store and a "genome" made of computer code to govern when the organism replenishes its store.