Aardvark Termite Foraging Lab (2D)

This 2D companion strips the aardvark's foraging problem down to the numbers that actually drive it. Each termite mound on the landscape has its own colony size and a diminishing-returns extraction curve — the deeper the aardvark digs into one mound, the harder it gets to pull out more termites. Rather than digging on a timer, the aardvark tracks its own running average energy rate for the whole session, travel time included, and leaves a mound the instant that mound's current extraction rate drops below that average — the marginal value theorem's central prediction. The mound-density slider makes the theorem's most testable claim visible: pack mounds closer together, and cheaper travel raises the landscape average, so the optimal giving-up time at each mound gets shorter.