"Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the center of the floor of the universe. The mice that found themself with no social role to fill – there are only so many head mouse roles, and the utopia was in no need of a Ratatouille-esque chef – became isolated. Here, the "excess" could not emigrate, for there was nowhere else to go. "The excess that find no social niches emigrate." "In the normal course of events in a natural ecological setting somewhat more young survive to maturity than are necessary to replace their dying or senescent established associates," Calhoun wrote in 1972. The mice split off into groups, and those that could not find a role in these groups found themselves with nowhere to go. When the population hit 620, that slowed to doubling around every 145 days, as the mouse society began to hit problems. About every 55 days, the population doubled as the mice filled the most desirable space within the pen, where access to the food tunnels was of ease. The experiment began, and as you'd expect, the mice used the time that would usually be wasted in foraging for food and shelter for having excessive amounts of sexual intercourse. It's not often something is described as a "utopia, but also there were lions there picking us all off one by one". Extreme precautions were taken to stop any disease from entering the universe.Īs well as this, no predators were present in the utopia, which sort of stands to reason. The mice were chosen for their health, obtained from the National Institutes of Health breeding colony. The weather was kept at 68☏ (20☌), which for those of you who aren't mice is the perfect mouse temperature. They could access limitless food via 16 food hoppers, accessed via tunnels, which would feed up to 25 mice at a time, as well as water bottles just above. The environment was designed to eliminate problems that would lead to mortality in the wild. In this study, he took four breeding pairs of mice and placed them inside a "utopia". The most infamous of the experiments was named, quite dramatically, Universe 25.
#Failed mouse utopia experiment series
John B Calhoun set about creating a series of experiments that would essentially cater to every need of rodents, and then track the effect on the population over time. But while everyone was worried about a lack of resources, one behavioral researcher in the 1970s sought to answer a different question: what happens to society if all our appetites are catered for, and all our needs are met? The answer – according to his study – was an awful lot of cannibalism shortly followed by an apocalypse.
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