Calhoun initiated the experiment with four pairs of healthy mice, which were set loose into the enclosure to begin the new society.ĭuring the first 104 days - a phase Calhoun dubbed the "strive period" - the mice adjusted to their new surroundings, marked their territory, and began nesting. With a plague-free environment, a plenitude of comforts, a lack of predation, and an unlimited supply of consumables, the mice would enjoy all the luxuries equivalent to modern human life. In Universe 25, a population of mice would grow within a 2.7-square-meter enclosure consisting of four pens, 256 living compartments, and 16 burrows that led to food and water supplies. Universe 25: Calhoun's Experiment with a Rodent UtopiaĮxpanding on his earlier studies, Calhoun devised his ultimate research experiment. Hitting the public just as vast urban expansion saw growing numbers of college grads flocking to big cities for work opportunities, many viewed the article as a warning of what could happen to the human race if populations continued to rise at their current rate. In 1962, Scientific American published Calhoun's observations from his research in the article "Population Density and Social Pathology," wherein he coined the phrase "behavior sink" to describe the results of overcrowding - namely the breakdown of social functions and the collapse of populations - in the enclosed rodent environment. The population would trail off to extinction.After that, the rodents would develop either hostile and cliquish or passive and anti-social behaviors.The mice would meet, mate and breed in large quantities.Over the course of these experiments, the same sequence of events would transpire each time: However, the population capped out at 200 after subdividing into smaller groups, each of which comprised merely a dozen individuals.Ĭontinuing with these studies during the 1950s, Calhoun set up a more complex enclosure to examine how further groups of rodents would behave in a sterilized, predator-free environment. Supplying the critters with unlimited food and water, he expected to see their population swell to 5,000 over the course of the 28-month experiment. Early Rodent StudiesĬalhoun began his experimental research on rodents in 1947 when he studied an enclosed group of Norway rats at a barn in Rockville, Maryland. Consequently, the “rodent utopia project” has been a subject of interest among architects, city planning councils, and government agencies around the world. Though wildly controversial when first made public, Calhoun's theory has raised concern over the years that the social breakdown of Universe 25 could ultimately serve as a metaphor for the trajectory of the human race. That, in turn, inevitably leads to extinction. In his theory, he suggested that overpopulation spawns a breakdown in social functions. The study confirmed his grim hypothesis, based on earlier studies of the Norway rat in small settings. Eventually, they established social orders that created inside and outside factions, and soon mating ceased altogether. Within the enclosure known as Universe 25, several pairs of mice bred a population, which ultimately swelled to 2,200. Calhoun (1917-1995) conducted a behavioral study of captive mice within a nine-square-foot enclosure at a rural facility in Poolesville, Maryland.
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