They were enormously time-consuming, and seem like a unique result of a man who had spent his entire life working on progressively larger behavioral studies. There is also the fact that these studies were never repeated.
Mice are mice, rats are rats, humans are humans. Though the parallels are tantalizing, it is important to remember that we can’t draw clear parallels between humans and experiments done with rodents under even the best conditions. The mad-scientist experiment thought up by Calhoun allows us to take a step back and consider what one might be able to say about the human condition, and the ways that our environments affect our psychology.
#RAT UTOPIA TRIAL#
I want to look at this paper because the experiments within - an extended trial of rodents in confined conditions - seems to offer perspective on the ways in which a multicellular animal - such as a mouse or rat - functions in the context of a greater whole. Calhoun called Population Density and Social Pathology .
To do this, we are going to take a closer look at a paper by John B. This week, we’ll look at another aspect of multicellularity, one that manifests on a community level, rather than the individual level. It was hardly a matter of overcrowding, the same problems would have arose even with a smaller population or a larger habitat if they didn't address the "imbalance" of the male-female population nor the lack of secluded spaces wherein the female mice could raise their young.So far, we have discussed the origins of multicellularity, the many paths to multicellularity, and circled back to ask the question - what is life? They were only equipped with the tools that allowed them to thrive in their natural habitat, but those same tools became self-destructive when placed in this new habitat and they didn't have the cognitive faculties to conscientiously adapt. Without secluded spaces, females were constantly having to defend their young until they grew exhausted and abandoned them.Ĭalhoun blamed overcrowding for the breakdown in social interaction without seemingly considering the perspective of the mice in this wholly foreign environment. In nature, females will find some hidden place that a rival male is unlikely to happen across. A species of mice that formed monogamist relationships would have done much better.Īs for males killing pups, the space offered no places to hide. So while there might have been plenty of food, there weren't enough females for the males giving their instinctual behavior. In nature, males tend to have a higher mortality rate, so there's less competition for mates, but without external forces to kill off the males, they were constantly fighting as they tried to form their own harems. Two of the biggest issues with his most famous Mouse Utopia experiment were that the species of mice he used typically formed harems and the male mice kill the offspring of rivals. He created what he considered a world of abundance for the mice, but the mice continued to do what was instinctual to them and their instincts were completely at odds with their new environment. I feel like Calhoun's work needs to be reevaluated in light of more modern understanding of animal behavior and psychology.
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