The mice would be allowed to live a life unconcerned with the savagery of the wild world. He would drop eight mice - four males, four females - into one of his “universes.” Once again, these universes would be free of any need and any disease. The peak of these utopia universes became what he called Universe 25. By the late 1960s, Calhoun eventually turned his rat heavens into mouse heavens. “Behavioral sink,” I think, is just another way of saying the end of the world as we know it. He noticed behavioral patterns emerge as the population increased, and as the “overcrowding” persisted he came up with the idea of the “behavioral sink.” This meant that at a certain point, due to population density, a civilization would collapse under its own weight. He’d keep them free from disease and watch the population grow. They purchased property in Maryland for Calhoun to turn into his experimental rat heaven.Ĭalhoun would drop rats into a pre-fab world where food and water and shelter was always available. In 1958, John Calhoun, an ethologist, started to build his Rat Utopia with the help of the National Institute of Mental Health. I can’t help but think that this place is the human version of The Rat Utopia. ![]() There is nothing beyond this world - and I must look like something that’s somehow snuck in from that nothingness. It makes it seem like this is the only world there is. SECURING YOUR WORLD is written across the side of the truck. ![]() Right as I think to knock on some doors, a security guard slowly drives past. I can’t tell if everyone here is hiding from me, or if they just can’t walk out into the sun without bursting into dust. But no one wants to talk to me about the end of the world in this maze of culs-de-sac and Spanish style houses. I’ve been wearing it a lot lately, and this place seemed like it needed a reminder. This is why I’ve decided to walk around the community wearing a shirt that says: THE END IS NEAR. Even the sky looks like it’s been injected with Botox. Even if Ponce de León never found his Fountain of Youth, these people have found a way to manufacture something close to it. He looks better than me, and I’m actually in my 30s. Even our friend, who is in his 70s, somehow looks 30. Nothing seems to age, nothing seems to die. I’m here for a funeral and staying with a family friend who happens to have the kind of money one needs to live in a place that gives off the illusion of immortality. You wouldn’t know the world was ending if you were standing here with me behind the tall manicured hedges and palm trees of this gated community in South Florida. Some people go outside and prepare as if it’s the last day on Earth - and others go outside like it’s just any other day. The apocalypse has become a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type of game that we all play now. The death of God or the spread of disinformation. We can’t even agree on what the end of the world even looks like. I don’t know if that means the world itself is ending, but our lives have been fundamentally mutilated and there’s no coming back from it. If it's possible, I think a control setup should be added, where the rats in the control "universe" would have to engage in activities like their natural behavior to get food.I think it’s fair to say the world we used to know has ended. I'd like to see a modern recreation of it, along with better statistical representation of the data and the changes over time. Is that abnormal? Some rats kill their young and the infant mortality rate rises as population density does. They all eat together - is that abnormal? Some of the rats and lazy, and live by themselves. They are given unlimited access to food and water - but, aren't all pets and lab animals given all the food and water they want? What's special about these?Īnother problem is that Calhoun does a lot of evaluating rat behavior. One problem that stood out to me is how the mice in Calhoun's experiment are any different than any other kind of laboratory or pet mice. The study finds a conclusion that is directly applicable to the issue of the day (overpopulation and overcrowding in Calhoun's time) and has an interesting metaphorical attention getting alarm to it ("We humans are the rats!"). It seems to have the character of a lot of the "Failed to replicate" studies in psychology and sociology. ![]() I'd like to see a replication of the Mouse Utopia experiment.
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