Just as the Incan empire experienced collapse at its territorial and cultural height, so too did the rats and mice. Empire can manifest itself in natural world, even in rats and mice. As the rodent populations aged, Calhoun’s colonies entered into a winter of death, as the populations slowly died with no new generation to replace them.Įxpansion and collapse, as shown by Calhoun’s experiments, are not purely human enterprises. Female mice shirked their motherly duties, eventually ceasing to produce offspring all together. Meanwhile, other male mice would conduct in violent, “hypersexual” behavior, attacking female mice and, as a result, leading to an infant mortality rate of “96 percent” (Kunkle).Īs this violent and deviant behavior continued to spread among the mice/rats, their populations began a sharp decline. Male mice known as “beautiful ones,” due to their incessant grooming, would cease all attempts to breed with females. Male mice began to exhibit either extreme passivity or rampant aggression. As defined by a Washington Post article, behavioral sink is “an innate and irreversible self-destruct button,” a biological response by the mice that prevented “overpopulation” (Kunkle). Image source: Washington Post.Īs the colonies exploded in population, strange and unusual behavior among the mice, labeled as “behavioral sink” by Calhoun, plagued the colonies. A picture of another habitat, depicting the water and food feeders scattered about the pen. However, this rise would always be followed by a sharp and sudden decline. As such, the mice and rat colonies ballooned in population as they exploited their safe and abundant environment. These colonies were designed to provide safety against dangers (disease and predators) while also providing an “unlimited supply of food” (Kunkle). He created colonies intended to be a utopia. In this blog post, I will detail the fall of the mouse colonies as they fell victim to the phenomenon of “behavioral sink.”ĭuring the 60s, Calhoun started his studies with the intent to study the behavior of rodents, including both mice and rats. In watching this video, I came to see the parallels between the rise and fall of human empires, such as the rise and fall of both the Incan and Spanish empires, to that of the mouse colonies during Calhoun’s experiments. Calhoun’s famous “Mouse Utopia” experiments. ” This video peaked my interest, as it detailed the collapse of mouse societies in research psychologist John B. Among my latest watching spree, I came across a diamond in the rough: Fredrik Knudsen’s video titled “ The Mouse Utopia Experiments. Image source: Washington Post.Īs most college students do in spats of boredom, I watch Youtube videos on my spare time. Pictured above is a graphic of one of Calhoun’s mouse habitats.
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