Who Wants to Live a Million Years Questions

1) The first time I played “Who Wants to Live a Million Years” my species survived the first time I played. It took this long because my species was the correct amount of diversity. This means that if things were perfect in a species that they could survive with little problems.

2) I chose long legs because they needed them to evade predators and they need height to reach tall food. I also chose fur because they are able to survive both fur in the hot time and in the cold time. These worked for me because I won the game the first time and with this combination I won several more games with the combination. I think this is so because this combination of phenotypes could be true to some species as well.

3) Yes I think the creatures in this game could be greatly impacted by genetic drift. Evidence of this in the gameplay is when an emergency is used and a creature is put in the herd with desired phenotype(s). For example when the fruit is getting higher and the animals are too short to reach it a creature with long legs or a long neck can be added into the gene pool as a dominant gene and the future offsprings will have this trait.

4) Long legs and fur were dominant and short legs and no fur were recessive. This is true because at the start of the game if you choose a creature with any of the recessive genes and one with the dominant gene there will be a rise in dominant genes from the very start of the game and the recessive genes will slowly disappear.

5) Cold conditions require fur, hot conditions require no fur, to evade predators long legs are required, and when fruit grows taller the animals need to adapt by either getting long legs or a long neck.

6) I would improve this simulation by getting rid of the emergency button, while genetic drift is a thing the alleles that aren’t common are chosen randomly and the player should not be able to choose what is random. Speaking of genetic drift we do not see it too much over the course of the gameplay; some of these animals develop quiffs but that is not a dramatic allele change which I think the game needs. And lastly the game should show what the animals are dying from (old age, whichever disaster or obstacle is put in place, etc).