How Rats Turned Their Private Paradise Into A Terrifying Dystopia

[Skidmore]

This article is quite a read. A disturbing one, but compelling.

http://io9.com/how-rats-turned-their-private-paradise-into-a-terrifyin-1687584457?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

In 1972, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a rat paradise with beautiful buildings and limitless food. He introduced eight mice to the population. Two years later, the mice had created their own apocalypse. Here's why.

Universe 25 was a giant box designed to be a rodent utopia. The trouble was, this utopia did not have a benevolent creator. John B. Calhoun had designed quite a few mouse environments before he got to the 25th one, and didn't expect to be watching a happy story. Divided into "main squares" and then subdivided into levels, with ramps going up to "apartments," the place looked great, and was always kept stocked with food, but its inhabitants were doomed from the get-go.

Universe 25 started out with eight mice, four males and four females. By day 560, the mouse population reached 2,200, and then steadily declined back down to unrecoverable extinction. At the peak population, most rats spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other rats. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. They'd move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. Sometimes they'd drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it.

More...

[Autumn]

1. Wow. That is unreal. Very disturbing.

Rec for the similarities.

[NuclearDem]

2. Nope, nothing Bond villainish about this at all.

"Look at ze rats, Mr Bond. See how zey fight over victuals and destroy zeir home!"

[snooper2]

3. This is stupid, and why can't the writer make up his/her mind- are they rats or mice?

[Ilsa]

4. Amazing. We can learn so much about ourselves

if we'd just learn from the animals and our own research.

[riderinthestorm]

5. Fascinating!!!!! Big K &R!

loved this conclusion:

Today, the experiment remains frightening, but the nature of the fear has changed. A recent study pointed out that Universe 25 was not, if looked at as a whole, too overcrowded. Pens, or "apartments" at the very end of each hallway had only one entrance and exit, making them easy to guard. This allowed more aggressive territorial males to limit the number mice in that pen, overcrowding the rest of the world, while isolating the few "beautiful ones" who lived there from normal society. Instead of a population problem, one could argue that Universe 25 had a fair distribution problem.

The fact remains that it had a problem, and one that eventually led to its destruction. If this behavior is shared by both mice and humans, can we escape Universe 25's fate?

[Demonaut]

7. were they mice or were they rats?....she interchanges the name rats and mice as though there is no

distinction between the species...makes the whole story suspect

[Skidmore]

8. I don't know how important that distinction is given what she is doing

is reporting on group behavior in a closed environment. I didn't get hung up on that at all. Regardless of species, the animals exhibited the behavior.

[snooper2]

10. It's stupid...she should have just done it with feral cats and an abandoned house..

Or how about goats...Yeah, goats in a mansion, start with 10 each

[Skidmore]

11. Did you read the article?

She is discussing the work of John Calhoun, who conducted the actual experiments. She did not do the experiments herself. I would suggest you look up Calhoun's work. She makes the point that the parallels between humans and mice can be drawn.

[snooper2]

13. no, I don't like the look of that link to be honest, I'll look up the guy myself though-

She can't keep her rodents straight

[LisaL]

15. If you are going to write an article about somebody's research, at least figure out what species it

was done on, mice or rats.
If she doesn't have a clue there is a difference between mice and rats, she shouldn't be writing articles about research.

[Skidmore]

16. I found the descriptons in the article interesting and

went to look for myself. Aside from the interchanging of the rodent terms, I find that she is drawing a conclusion which can be supported by the studies she is referring to. These studies were done decades ago.

[Skidmore]

14. Help yourself.

http://www.physicsoflife.pl/dict/calhoun%27s_experiment.html#calhoun's_experiment_descriptions

[onehandle]

9. Earth: Year 2100. nt

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. A terrifying, soul-crushing dystopia full of rodents set against a backdrop of paradise?

Yup, sounds like Disney World to me.

[Blue_Tires]

17. More info:

#t=55

[shraby]

18. I remember reading about that experiment back when it was completed.

It's a very good window on what can happen in an overcrowed space whether mice, rats, deer or humans.
It was very unsettling, but thinking on it at the time, the consequences were understandable.

[Jim Lane]

19. A natural experiment with reindeer had the same result.

During World War II, the Coast Guard maintained a LORAN station on St. Matthew Island, a remote island in the Bering Sea.

In 1944, 29 reindeer were introduced to the island by the United States Coast Guard to provide an emergency food source. The Coast Guard abandoned the island a few years later, leaving the reindeer. Subsequently, the reindeer population rose to about 6,000 by 1963[6] and then died off in the next two years to 42 animals.[7] A scientific study attributed the population crash to the limited food supply in interaction with climatic factors (the winter of 1963–64 was exceptionally severe in the region).[1] By the 1980s, the reindeer population had completely died out.[2]

The reindeer could thrive, without being fed by the Coast Guard, because they could eat lichen that grew on the island. That was fine until the reindeer population grew so large that it outpaced the growth of the lichen, resulting in complete die-off of the reindeer.