This was a basic test of evolutionary algorithms involving turtles swimming around and eating food. After a turtle ate a certain amount of food they would reproduce and create two turtles with the same characteristics (size, speed, reproduction threshold, etc). During "reproduction" there would be a small chance of random mutation for each of the genes passed along. Over time the turtles would get smaller and faster due to natural selection, even though a smaller turtle burned more food each round (reducing its ability to reach its reproduction threshold and create offspring). It was an illuminating endeavor because it showed me just how powerful evolution can be, even though it in and of itself is a simple mechanism (in the real world the underlying mechanisms of mutation and biology are obviously very complex, but the mechanism of evolution itself is fairly straightforward, though there are nuances).