7 Ways No Man’s Sky Gives Us A Science Boner

4. The Wildlife

It's one thing generating stars, planets and galaxies with a bit of software, it's a whole other deal to attempt to mimic biological systems.

Not only are the animals' bodies procedurally generated to match the environment, but so are their routines. Some are daylight dwellers, some are nocturnal and they follow daily routines of eating, drinking and sleeping. There's even a food chain in operation which, bearing in mind this is all generated by an algorithm, is fricking cool.

Even the animals' vocalisations are procedurally generated using software that models the shapes of their throats, meaning that each call actually corresponds to the anatomy of the beast.

Much of the wildlife will be at least a little bit familiar to an Earthling, with plenty of comparable animals here on Earth. This isn't just good for making the player feel comfortable in the game, but is something that many evolutionary biologists would nod approvingly at. Convergent evolution refers to the process in which nature solves the same challenge the same way on multiple separate occasions. On Earth, for example, birds and bats evolved their wings separately, but they're pretty similar to one another. It's not beyond the realms of possibility, and is perhaps even likely, that if we do ever find complex extraterrestrial life, it will look surprisingly familiar.

Plus, you know, there's dinosaurs.