Siphonovores

A colony of small, specialized, micro-robots that symbiotically gather to form something resembling an organism. Tiny, expendable probes and drones are commonplace and used by just about all walks of life in space, from civilian to scientific to military applications. Once a microbot is used, it is simply abandoned, as they are cheap and easy to manufacture. However, sometimes the microbot's self-preservation routine will cause it to seek sustenance. Microbots that find other microbots while searching are sometimes observed cannibalizing them and minifacturing themselves more robust hardware, while other times microbots will travel or sometimes fuse together with others, and this process continues until the ensuing accumulation of microbots begins displaying behavior not unlike a living creature, displaying some measure of primitive, bestial intelligence. They are by no means sentient; they don't "understand" the routines, subroutines, or programming that drives them, it instead forms a directive akin to an animal's instinct. Although it operates as one singular being, it is actually made up of hundreds of individual, specialized units that function similarly to how individual organs function in an organism. Siphonovores encompass a "family" of a variety of "species", ranging from harmless to predatory and extremely dangerous. Their forms have a loose consistency and vary wildly from colony to colony, and the classifications of each one is an area of intense study. There have been many advances in microbot programming to prevent the formation of new siphonovores, but it seems to be an inherent problem with what makes the tiny drones so cost effective and practical, and the programming cannot be changed much more than it already has. Several safety measures have made siphonovores much less common than they used to be, but they still form from time to time. There are many schools of thought surrounding siphonovores, and whether or not they should be classified as living creatures and afforded all the rights and protection that this would grant them.