If you haven’t run across it yet, Karl Sims’ virtual creatures are also really fascinating. https://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html And anything by Melanie Mitchell. Her book “An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms” is great.
As it seems like you’re seeing, what evolves depends a lot on what you’re selecting for and the environment they’re ‘growing’ in. This is another paper with more details. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123229/pdf/978... My favorite stories are the ones where the organisms evolved to be able to detect when they were in the test environment and only performed the high-cost, selected-for behavior there.
This is a neat project! Another interesting project with self-replicating and evolving computer programs is Avida, developed in Charles Ofria’s lab. http://avida.devosoft.org/ It’s been used to research evolutionary processes in collaboration with Richard Lenski who leads the long term E. coli evolution experiment. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01568
There’s also an Avida-ED version designed for classroom use.
This is that lesson for getting started with OpenRefine. http://datacarpentry.org/OpenRefine-ecology-lesson/