Four Lessons to Be Learned From Calhoun´s Mouse Utopia: Paradise Turned Into Hell

In the late 60´s Calhoun performed an experiment in which four pairs of mice were kept in a nine-square-foot enclosure. The mice lived in a plague-free environment, with an abundance of comforts, a lack of predation, and an unlimited supply of consumables. This population grew to 2200, they created social order, but they also ceased to mate. Within two years, the entire society went extinct. He performed this research to test his hypothesis: overpopulation spawns a breakdown in social functions, and that, in turn, inevitably leads to extinction.

Calhoun’s theory has raised concern that the social breakdown could ultimately serve as a metaphor for the trajectory of the human race. In his experiment, the rodents had limitless food. The space included multiple levels and secluded little rodent condos. It was a rodent Utopia. At the peak population, most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called ´the beautiful ones.´ Generally guarded by one male, the females, and few males, inside the space, didn’t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining, the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young. What are the lessons we can learn from this experiment?

1. Humans Can Do Well In Big Cities

Let´s start with the good news. Humans can handle living in densely populated areas better than rats. Rats may suffer from crowding; human beings can cope. At the time of the study, there was a feeling of dread that crowded urban areas foreshadowed the risk of moral decay. Furthermore, the habitats he created weren’t really overcrowded, but isolation enabled aggressive mice to stake out territory and isolate the beautiful ones.

2. Social Interaction Can Be Too Much

Moral decay could arise not from density but from excessive social interaction. For the mice, the act of eating was viewed as a communal activity, which caused most of the mice to favor the same few compartments. There was enough space, but still, the mice choose to stay close to each other. All of this huddling, however, led to a drop in mating. Interestingly, not all of Calhoun’s mice had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.

3. Having Everything Doesn´t Make Us Happy

Having everything and no problems to deal with doesn´t make us happy. Throughout these experiments, the same sequence of events would take place each time. The mice would meet, mate, and breed in large quantities. Eventually, a leveling-off would occur. After that, the rodents would develop either hostile and cliquish or passive and anti-social behaviors. The population would trail off to extinction. Having everything we need and no problems to handle doesn´t make us happy; it can make us passive and anti-social. When all needs are accounted for, and no conflict exists, the act of living is stripped to its barest physiological essentials of food and sleep. In Calhoun’s view:

Herein is the paradox of a life without work or conflict.

When all sense of necessity is stripped from the life of an individual, life ceases to have purpose.

The individual dies in spirit.

4. We Need Hierarchy and Social Roles

With male mice abandoned their traditional roles, they developed overly aggressive and passive behavioral patterns and a breakdown of social roles. After ten months, behavior disparities between males of high and low status became more pronounced. Those at the bottom of the pecking order found themselves rejected from females and withdrew from mating altogether. Having no roles to fulfill within the society of mice, these outcast males wandered apart from the larger groups to eat and sleep alone and sometimes fight among one another. One-third emerged as socially dominant.

The other two-thirds turned out less socially adept than their forbearers. As bonding skills diminished among the mice, their society went into a slow but irreversible decline. The alpha males became more aggressive and combative. The beta males (those ranked between the aggressive alphas and outcast omegas) grew timid and inert and often wound up being the passive recipients of violence. Along with the violence, hostility, and lack of mating, a younger generation of mice reached maturity, having never been exposed to examples of normal, healthy relations. With no concept of mating, parenting, or marking territory, this generation of mice spent all of their waking hours eating, drinking, and grooming themselves. When the population started declining, the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young. Some of this we can see now in Japan. Sexual desire and sexual activity have been declining in Japan for years and are a cause of Japan’s decreasing birth rate. Twenty-eight percent of Japanese men and 26% of women aged 35–39 have no sexual experience. (Attitudes toward Marriage and Family among Japanese Singles, 2011)

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.

Edward O. Wilson

Calhoun argued that experiences such as tension, stress, anxiety, and the need to survive, make it necessary to engage in society. Humans are cooperative but also competitive; in any group, humans will establish a hierarchical order.

Even today, we still can learn lessons from Calhoun´s experience. Men are not rodents, but there are enough similarities to keep in mind the lessons we can learn from his research.

Interesting links:

Good Times Create Weak Men, And Weak Men Create Hard Times

How To Become Rich Quickly, And No, It Is Not What You Think

What Can a Pessimist Teach You About Happiness?

References

(2011). Attitudes toward Marriage and Family among Japanese Singles. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

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