![]() The rats were said to be in “rat utopia” or “mouse paradise.” Universe 25 Experiment He provided unlimited resources, such as water, food, and also protection from predators as well as from disease and weather. ![]() While working at NIH Calhoun began numerous experiments with rats and mice. US Army: Behaviour Wild Norway Rats, 1955 (26 mins) This “behavioural sink” – the collapse in behaviour – was observed by Calhoun in a series of experiments on overcrowding he conducted. The take-home message was that crowding resulted in pathological behaviour – in rats and by extension in humans. The result was a population boom, followed by such severe psychological disruption that the animals died off to extinction. In these early crowding experiments, rats were supplied with everything they needed – except space. In 1972, he detailed the specifications of his ‘ Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice’, a practical utopia built in the laboratory called Universe 25. John Calhoun was an ethologist and animal behaviourist who had a long-standing interest in how rodents interact and create societies. By 1972, the issue reached its mainstream peak with the report of the Rockefeller Commission on US Population, which recommended that population growth be slowed or even reversed.īut while everyone was worried about a lack of resources, one behavioural researcher sought to answer a different question: what happens to society if all our appetites are catered for, and all our needs are met? ![]() ![]() After Ehrlich appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1970, his book became a phenomenal success. But John Calhoun’s “Universe 25” experiments on rats and mice showed that overcrowding on its own could destroy a society before famine even got a chance.Įcologists such as Vogt and Fairfield Osborn were cautioning that the growing population was putting pressure on food and other natural resources as early as 1948 and both published bestsellers on the subject.Įhrlich published The Population Bomb, an alarmist work suggesting that the overcrowded world was about to be swept by famine and resource wars. William Vogt, Paul Ehrlich, and the others were neo-Malthusians, arguing that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. ![]()
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