taut amoeba

An amoeba as a bubble of the foam: its skin pulls taut and it keeps its area, but its edge reaches out for food. What it eats it grows by, living burns it away; at twice its size it divides, starved it dies. Amoebae do not eat each other, they push. cells

Left button divides an amoeba, right button or Shift lets it die. Keys: N start again, Space pause.

It finds food Reaching out, how hard Smell carries, pixels Crumbs at the start Crumbs falling in, every 1000 steps A crumb feeds, share of an amoeba Starves in, steps without food Amoebae stick together Neighbours share food, per 100 steps

Sticking, the film between two amoebae pulls less than one on the water, so daughters stay together as one body. Sharing, two with a film between them even out their food, the faster the longer the film.

The field's edge pushes away

At 0 the edge counts for nothing and amoebae stick to it, as that spares them skin; at 1 it is as the water; above, it pushes them off.

Drawn

Outer membrane, pixels Walls inside, pixels Walls inside, how much they show

Smooth, the films are traced as lines and drawn as splines: the membrane on the water thick, the walls between two amoebae thin and faint, so a body of many reads as one.

Colours One colour a body Soft blobs, no walls inside Blob softness, pixels Trails where they crawled Trail fades to half in, steps

Any of these together. A body is the amoebae joined by films between them, coloured as its first; the better fed still the lighter. A blob is the amoebae blurred and cut at a level, with a light at every nucleus. Under the microscope the cytoplasm is grainy and clear, with a bright halo outside the membrane; in fluorescence the membranes glow green, the food magenta, the nuclei blue.

Show the smell Show the nuclei Field size Count only by the membranes

A pixel takes a label from round it, so only those by a membrane can change; counting only those gives the same, much faster on a large field. Off, every pixel is looked at, to compare.

Kernel radius Noise Steps per frame