  This paper reports on patterns exhibiting self-replication with spontaneous,
inheritable mutations and exponential genetic drift in Neural Cellular
Automata. Despite the models not being explicitly trained for mutation or
inheritability, the descendant patterns exponentially drift away from ancestral
patterns, even when the automaton is deterministic. While this is far from
being the first instance of evolutionary dynamics in a cellular automaton, it
is the first to do so by exploiting the power and convenience of Neural
Cellular Automata, arguably increasing the space of variations and the
opportunity for Open Ended Evolution.
