Eater 1 reaction
Eater 1 is a reaction that eats various patterns with a 2-cell or 3-cell leading edge (or occasionally more), most notably gliders. The term was originally used for the fishhook, and the fishhook is often still called "eater 1", but the term "eater 1" is more general and refers to the reaction.
| Three eater 1 catalyses using different still lifes, which are all equivalent. (click above to open LifeViewer) |
In most cases, an eater 2 performs the same function as an eater 1, but there are a decent number of catalyses that only work with an eater 2, and a few that only work with an eater 1, such as eating a blinker:
| Eating a blinker works with an eater 1 but not an eater 2. (click above to open LifeViewer) |
For an eater 1 to work, it is essential that the cells marked in yellow and red below are off.
| The yellow cell is on, so it fails. The red cell is off, so it succeeds. (click above to open LifeViewer) |
Unusual uses of eater 1
| The heavyweight emulators act as eater 1s in this p32 honey farm hassler. (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
| As shown in the 101 page, it has a contrived catalysis. Replacing the oscillator with a fishhook and placing a domino in generation 3 reveals that it functions identically. (click above to open LifeViewer) |
Frequency
According to Catagolue, as of May 2, 2024, the vast majority of 22P36 eater 1s, about 87%, are fishhooks. There are about 1/10 as many integrals as fishhooks, and 1/100 as many trans-block on docks, cis-block on docks, [[moose antlers], and fourteeners, with others being even rarer.
The ratio is slightly different for asymmetric pentadecathlon oscillators. The fishhook:integral ratio is only 4.6:1. Next is pentadecathlon on cis-boat up on dock, but that is not "natural" frequency as it forms from a forming pentadecathlon hitting a beehive and block rather than the cis-boat up on dock having to form by itself. Other eater 1s have a small sample size, but elevener and block on dock (trans relative to the pentadecathlon) both imply a 70:1 ratio to the fishhook, more common than the 22P36 data.