Life: beetles, plus extra features which must be justified.
I’d like to suggest the swap of oyster in the place of clam, because oysters are less mobile than clams.
This leads to a funny observation: for some reason I think a worm and an oyster are obviously animals, like if you were a caveman with no notion of genetics or the tree of life and you came across either, I suspect you’d think “this thing is obviously some kind of animal.” But a sponge is not so obvious, I think, to our hypothetical caveman. I could believe a sponge is a weird plant.
I think you need at least one distinguishing feature beyond the minimal to become obviously an animal, for some reason.
Then I saw the videos of them quickly evading predators or just swimming around in general. e.g:
Clamming was a surprisingly fun way to waste a morning as a kid, it is like playing at the beach with objectives. If you ever happen across somebody with a license, I suggest giving it a try.
The roots of "animal", "fungus", and "plant" are completely arbitrary; anything outside the chosen root can be called a "protist" (many marine "plants" are counted as protists nowadays).
I never read the opinion that beetles were simple in the "MVP" sense of the word. I think they can be quite complex life forms.
It is definitely possible I haven’t thought this out very well.
Maybe they enjoy it.
I would think the opposite; scorned humans often turn even more violent.
Dude... There are water beetles that live underwater, but do also fly and walk. This is not "mininum viable" in any sense of the term. Just because they have smaller brains and less developed immune systems does not mean that they are millions of years beyond mammals in fantastic specialization!