43. Mouse Utopia
Malthus, an English economist and demographer, proposed in 1798 that the human population would grow faster than the food supply. His evolutionary theory sparked debates about birth rates, sterilization, and moral restraint.
BF Skinner theorized that a stimulus will elicit a response, which, when reinforced, is repeated. By having rats press a lever in a Skinner box to get food (a pellet), he determined that to maximize the rats' lever-pressing (work), the reward (the pellet) should be given on a variable schedule, in no predictable pattern, from 1958 to 1974.
In 1969, Mckenna, a psychology professor at William and Mary, established a “token economy” for backward schizophrenics at Eastern State Hospital. The token economy allowed patients to prepare food, assemble and sell clothing, and sell knick-knacks. The patients learned to work and were paid with Monopoly money.
On June 22, 1972, John Calhoun, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, stood over just 122 surviving mice, which would soon be dead, in what had once been a thriving population of 2,200 rodents in his ‘Universe 25 Experiment,’ where Mouse Utopia turned into dystopia. [Annie Melchor, May 28, 2024, TS Digest] A series of rodent experiments showed that even with abundant food and water, societal collapse occurred in Mouse Utopia.
“Over the last few hundred years, the human population of Earth has seen an increase, taking us from an estimated 1 billion in 1804 to 7 billion in 2017. Throughout this time, concerns have been raised that our numbers may outgrow our ability to produce food, leading to widespread famine.” [James Felton, Senior Staff Writer IFL Science, Oct. 18, 2023] Today, Earth’s population is 8.2 billion. [Worldometer, September 6, 2024].
In the late sixties and early seventies, John Calhoun “sought to answer a different question: What happens to society if all our appetites are catered for, and all our needs are met?” [Felton, p.2, para.3] Calhoun took four pairs of healthy breeding mice and placed them in an environment designed to provide their food and eliminate all threats. The weather was kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, creating Mouse Utopia. He called the project Universe 25.
In Mouse Utopia, the rodents could obtain limitless food from 16 food hoppers accessed through tunnels, as well as water bottles above. Not surprisingly, the mice used the time they would have spent seeking food and avoiding predators for eating and mating only. The population doubled approximately every 55 days. The mice took the most desirable space with easy access to the food tunnels in Universe 25.
In Mouse Utopia, free from predators and searching for food, the population peaked at 2,200, even though Calhoun believed he had designed Project 25 to hold 3,000 mice. “When the population hit 620, it slowed to doubling every 145 days, as the mouse society began to face problems. The mice split off into groups, and those that could not find a role in these groups found themselves with nowhere to go.” [Feldon, p. 2, para.8]
The following describes what happened next in Calhoun’s experiment, as communicated by Felton [p.3, paras. 1-6]. During the first phase of the downfall of Utopia, when the excess mice could not “emigrate,” “males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the center of their floor of the universe. From that point on, they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behavior elicit attacks by territorial males. Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.” [Calhoun]
“The withdrawn males would not respond during attacks, lying there immobile. Later on, they would attack others in the same pattern. The female counterparts of these isolated males withdrew as well. Some mice spent their days preening themselves, shunning mating, and never engaging in fighting. Due to this, they had excellent fur coats and were dubbed ‘the beautiful ones.’” [Felton, p. 3, para.3]. The “beautiful ones” kept grooming until they died, showing no interest in procreation. The population’s resistance to procreation became apparent in stage one of the collapse.
“Despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that their every need was being catered for, mothers would abandon their young or merely forget about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves. The mother mice also became aggressive toward trespassers to their nests, with males who would normally fill this role banished to other parts of Utopia. This aggression spilled over, and the mothers would regularly kill their young. Infant mortality in some areas of Utopia reached 90 percent.” [Felton, p.3, para. 5]
Although Project 25 was structured for 3,000 mice, the population only reached 2,200, at which point Calhoun termed the phrase “second death.” “The breakdown of usual mouse behavior wasn’t just limited to the outsiders. The ‘Alpha Male’ mice became extremely aggressive, attacking others with no motivation or gain for themselves, and regularly raped both males and females. Violent encounters sometimes ended in mouse-on-mouse cannibalism.” [Felton, p.3, para. 4]
The survivors of attacks from their mothers “would grow up around unusual mouse behaviors. As a result, they never learned typical mouse behaviors and many showed little or no interest in mating, preferring to eat and preen themselves alone.” [Felton, p.3, para. 6] As a result, they “retired to the upper decks of the enclosure, while others formed violent gangs below, which would regularly attack and cannibalize other groups as well as their own. The low birthrate and high infant mortality, combined with the violence, soon led to the extinction of the entire colony. During the mousepocalypse, food remained plentiful and every need was met.” [Felton, p.3, para. 7]
“The end of the mouse utopia could have arisen ‘not from density’ but from excessive social interaction.” [Felton, p.4, para. 5, quotes Historian Edmund Ramsden]. Could the mouse experiment apply to humans? Calhoun warns of a day when all our needs are met. [Felton, p.4, paras. 2 & 3]
“For an animal as complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling roles, and having expectations to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can result.” —John P. Calhoun. Calhoun termed what he saw as the cause of the collapse ‘behavioral sink.’ [Felton, p.4]
Calhoun concluded: “For an animal as simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviors involve the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defense, and hierarchical intragroup and intergroup social organization . . . In the normal course of events in a natural ecological setting, somewhat younger individuals survive to maturity than are necessary to replace their dying or senescent established associates, with the excess that find no social niche emigrating.” [Calhoun]
In light of our current demographic collapse in almost every industrialized country, independent of political persuasion, Project 25, Mouse Utopia (in the context of earlier work by professors Skinner and Mckenna) raises some interesting questions about our future:
Why did a stressless reality with regard to plentiful food and water and an absence of traditional predators (“Mouse Utopia”) lead to sexual abstinence and mouse cannibalism, resulting in “Mouse Dystopia” and extinction? Was it solely due to an inability to emigrate?
Although Calhoun and others note the inability for mice to ‘emigrate,’ is that sufficient to explain the dramatic learned and innate behavior changes over just a few generations?
If it is true that stresslessness eliminates lifelessness, then was eliminating needed productive forms of stress—food gathering and defending against predators—the reason for dystopic isolation, aggression, and cannibalism?
In today’s political polarity, both sides can draw lessons. The right might argue that the promise of “free food” and a predator-free environment—the “Utopia” promised by Communism in practice—leads to the destruction of mankind, while the left might contend that we need control over all to prevent “alpha males” from cannibalizing, raping, and plundering society.
The truth is likely starkly before us. The productive stresses in life, including food gathering, child-rearing, and predator defending or avoidance, involve working together to achieve them. Removing major stresses prohibits generational transfers of information and knowledge on how to deal with them, creating idle time and an overindulgence in food and sex, and leading to a loss of interest in child-rearing. Over generations, young people grow up without proper guidance and productive labor to focus their normal aggression constructively, resulting in destructive behavior.
Have a blessed week!
Tony Christ