That sounds very similar to what happened in my zerobot sim, very low energy (150) bots that would wonder about and try to tie to everything, (though after increasing tie costs, while they still tie it would only be to one object at a time) I was still trying to figure out their conspec but they would only shoot veggies they have tied too, and when feeding they reproduced.
So when a bot came across a veggie it would latch on and feed while spewing out lots of offspring in the hope that one of them would then come across some more food.
I have put that aside now and have started a mutation sim with alga and animal minimalis, so far at 12M cycles (only about 350 bots) and they showing much more interesting behaviour.