behavioral sink, rodent experiments and the downfall of man

JosephDredd

JosephDredd

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Has anyone here heard of the Behavioral Sink experiments by John B. Calhoun?

He built paradises for rodents and watched what happened as they bred themselves into overpopulation. Unlike other scientists (who predicted overpopulation would cause society to fall apart due to resources completion), Calhoun was noticing a different trend: at a certain point, rodent societies would reach a tipping point at which point all social bonds would fall apart, leading to the unpreventable death of mouse instincts and mouse society.

More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
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There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later “second death” of the physical body.
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A truly fantastic article on his work is here (link).

It is easy for people to find parallels to modern society, but is this creating links where none exist? Or is our society falling apart in the same way?
 
It's a pretty interesting study at face value.

Makes you think humans may not be well suited for cities. We're certainly not adapted to them.
 
I remember first hearing about this experiment in a lesser known Sagan book. His wife may have been a coauthor. He cautioned against extrapolating too much. Really interesting results though.
 
Perhaps hunting will begin to make more sense to those who oppose it.
 
I don't usually anthropomorphize swarms of rodents...


...But when I do, it means something.
 
Rats are suposed to be extra horny
 
Considering violence is generally decreasing and a lot of crowded places are the safest, like East Asia, or NYC being the safest big city in America I dont think we have to worry yet. Mice dont live under rules and regulation. It makes sense that density can lead to violence assuming a weak state or none at all but really if you become out of hand as a human, you'll probably go to jail or get shot by police.
 
Humans are much more adaptable and complex than mice.
 
crowded & impersonal ---those that are social only via forums experience this online as well.

Very interesting, indeed.

Was going to make a new thread on Calhoun's experiments but decided to search & bump first.
 
It's very interesting. My only real question is what extent does the contained environment play a role. So, if he had added another chamber, would the results have continued?
 
Is this the study that showed incidence of homosexuality increased with population density?
I had a coworker that was always going on about that.
 
IngaVovchanchyn said:
Maybe not. Seems like Japan is having issues with that.

http://www.newser.com/story/238324/half-of-this-countrys-married-couples-arent-having-sex.html
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The impacts of being overworked is underrated. I was reading something the other day about how the new status symbol is how long you work. It's become a way of signaling how important you are to others "40 hours? I work 55", "That's nothing, I work so much that I sleep in the office but the department would fall apart without me. You're lucky that they don't need you so much."

But the other side is that people are too tired and too busy to engage in the little parts of life that also matter to society.
 
panamaican said:
The impacts of being overworked is underrated. I was reading something the other day about how the new status symbol is how long you work. It's become a way of signaling how important you are to others "40 hours? I work 55", "That's nothing, I work so much that I sleep in the office but the department would fall apart without me. You're lucky that they don't need you so much."

But the other side is that people are too tired and too busy to engage in the little parts of life that also matter to society.
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Yeah, I've run in that very attitude. I've put in my fair share of 60 hour weeks, but not in recent years, and I'm much happier.
 
Damn that is a crazy read. I believe it will ultimately be inevitable for human society as well.
 
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