The tiny bots are made from the skin cells of frogs, but they don’t reproduce by mitosis or meiosis or any of the other ways cells divide and replicate in normal circumstances. Instead, they build more of themselves from raw materials — free-floating frog skin cells — creating multiple generations of nearly identical organisms.
In action, the bots (dubbed “xenobots” by their inventors), even look like Pac-Man. They move in wild corkscrews and spirals, their open “mouths” scooping the free-floating skin cells into piles. The cells tend to adhere, or stick together, once put in contact with one another, so these piles gradually meld into new, spiraling xenobots.
