So the special thing about NEAT is that it allows the shape of the neural net to change. It can also do some sort of mix between two neural nets (like sexual reproduction), but I haven't implemented that.
Natural selection in this sim just happens by itself, there is a limited amount of food and only the best adapted ones survive. So the best performing neural networks duplicate themselves and create small variations of themselves. This part is not connected to the NEAT algorithm, I've just seen that NEAT performs particularly good vs more fixed-structure neural networks.
One more question, sorry my knowledge of ML is not so profound, does NEAT algorithm mimic how natural selection works? And how.