![]() ![]() But to find that value, one would have to look at them in terms of the data that they actually provided. That’s not to say that there’s no value to be found in Calhoun’s experiments. And, wouldn’t you know it, it was the following decade that saw the production of the now popular Jaffe memo. While Malthusianism may have already been popular in the decades preceding Calhoun’s experiments, a popular misconception regarding them may have played a huge role in the movement’s further popularity. In a sense, the Universe 25 experiment came to be the “mouse utopia” experiment which fooled your parents and grandparents.Īs a case study concerning the National Socialists of Germany may prove, when any misconception becomes popular enough, tragedy is a potential outcome. ![]() Nonetheless, the consensus was that the experiments gave us a glimpse into the future of humanity if humanity’s numbers were to continue to grow without check, further feeding into the Malthusianism that was popular at the time. What’s more, the Universe 25 enclosure came nowhere close to capacity at the point when the colony failed. This becomes evident when considering the fact that the colony did not want for anything to eat or drink at any time during the experiment, as it was all provided by Calhoun. The purpose of the experiments was to observe behavioral sink in rats who were not able to escape one another’s company at any time. Calhoun’s experiments did not concern limited resources, nor did it concern overpopulation. In light of this, it’s easy to see why Calhoun’s experiments were interpreted to mean that consequences similar to what befell Universe 25 might also befall humanity, if humanity’s numbers were to continue to grow unchecked.īut there was a problem. ![]() This research came to be of particular public interest, as it came at a time when Malthusianism, the idea that the earth was nearing its limit for its ability to support humanity’s growing population, was widely accepted. As the experiment progressed, the mice descended into antisocial and violent behavior, and the colony ended up failing when the females failed to care for their young. The most famous of these enclosures was called “Universe 25”, which was notable for its capacity for housing upwards of 5000 mice. So it is when one attempts to thwart a perceived oncoming crisis, but ends up doing more harm than good.ĭecades ago, researcher John Calhoun set out to conduct a set of experiments which involved confining rats to enclosures, and observing them as they are continually provided with ample food, safety from predators, and allowing their populations to grow without interference. John Calhoun, pictured inside the Universe 25 enclosure.Įven with good intentions, what’s stupid is still stupid. In a 2011 article, Ramsden writes that Calhoun’s studies were brandished by others to justify population control efforts largely targeted at poor and marginalized communities.Dr. Population growth in the 1970s was swelling, and films such as Soylent Green tapped into growing fears of overpopulation and urban violence. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to ,” says Ramsden.Ĭalhoun wasn’t shy about anthropomorphizing his findings, binning rodents into categories such as “juvenile delinquents” and “social dropouts,” and others seized on these human parallels. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves females stopped getting pregnant. ![]() Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. This iteration, dubbed Universe 25, was the first crowding experiment he ran to completion.Įventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. The only scarce resource in this microcosm was physical space, and Calhoun suspected that it was only a matter of time before this caused trouble in paradise.Ĭalhoun had been running similar experiments with rodents for decades but had always had to end them prematurely, ironically because of laboratory space constraints, says Edmund Ramsden, a science historian at Queen Mary University of London. In 1968, Calhoun had started the experiment by introducing four mouse couples into a specially designed pen-a veritable rodent Garden of Eden-with numerous “apartments,” abundant nesting supplies, and unlimited food and water. The results, laid bare at his feet, had taken years to play out. Calhoun wasn’t the survivor of a natural disaster or nuclear meltdown rather, he was a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health conducting an experiment into the effects of overcrowding on mouse behavior. ![]()
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