The Lenia family of continuous cellular automata can be viewed as the iterative application of a constant function with unpredictable convergence properties. This makes it mathematically analogous to the Mandelbrot set and neural network trainability, which have both been shown to have fractal convergence boundaries. Using an escape-time algorithm, we plot the stability of the Orbium unicaudatus species as a function of two parameters at a time, generating fractals that persist on multiple spatial scales. We categorize regions in this parameter space and explore them to find a set of familiar species, one novel specimen, and many non-trivial variations of Orbium that fundamentally rely on discretization to survive. Based on these discoveries, we hypothesize the existence of many complex undiscovered species hidden in the fractal parameter spaces of the rest of the Lenia zoo.

This content is only available as a PDF.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.