SWIMMERS:  Mental States



Swimmers are not much on brains.  Their lives are pretty basic as far as what they perceive and what they want.  Remember: a swimmer has only two goals in life: food and sex.  Its whole life is spent pursuing food bits and potential mates.  At any given time, if you stop a swimmer and inquire what's on its mind (using the get swimmer info tool - see section on tools), you will notice that it will be in only one of six mental states:



1) looking for a mate      4) looking for food

2) pursing a mate	      5) pursuing food

3) mating		      6) eating



Oh yea, and there's also "dead".  That happens either if a swimmer's energy drops to zero and starves, or if its age reaches "Maximum Lifespan".   



IT'S A SWIMMER'S LIFE

It's basically like this: every swimmer just wants to make babies.  But swimmers need to have enough energy for the mating game, so, as a prerequisite, they need to eat food bits regularly.  As long as a swimmer is not hungry, it will look around until it finds a swimmer whose body contains its favorite color.  If it does find one, it will fall in love.  Then it will pursue this loved one - relentlessly, although there are three things that can make it change its mind:



1) it got hungry and had to go off in search of food

2) its loved one swam too far away and it went out of sight

3) its loved one got too old, weak, or just up and died.



In this case, it's back to the drawing board - gotta find another mate.  This basically sums up the intellectual life of a swimmer.  The physical life is actually a bit more interesting, because swimmers can do quite a number of things with their bodies in order to get to their food or mates.  This is the part of Darwin Pond that evolves.