Of Mice and Men: Could We be Looking at Total Human Annihilation

Revisiting the Results of the Mouse Utopia that led to Extinction

A recent click through to a click through regarding Covid madness and overpopulation concerns had me revisiting a long ago study of lab rats. Beginning in the 1950's behaviorist John Calhoun set up a series of experiments on rats and mice to see what would happen to their population if they were left in large enclosed areas with unlimited food. Human overpopulation was a striking concern in many parts of the world and Malthusian ideas that populations would breed beyond carrying capacity leading to a crash as resources were outstripped was guiding elite thinking. Calhoun's first experiments with rats showed that after a stage of large population growth reproduction leveled off before the carrying capacity of the enclosure was reached. The scientist then went farther with mice, culminating in Universe 25, a veritable mouse Utopia. 

Over the course of five years, the entire population went extinct. Here's how.

Calhoun set up conditions to be perfect for the mice: unlimited food and water, no predators, a perfect climate controlled 70 degree fahrenheit temperature and ample nesting boxes, or apartments, interconnected by a series of tubes. Four breeding pairs of mice were selected, all certified as in perfect health, disease free, and with no genetic defects. Here's what happened next.

During the first stage, dubbed the strive phase, the mice explored their new habitat, selected areas and mates for themselves, and proceeded to have a lot of sex. This predictably resulted in a lot of baby mice. The population doubled and doubled again, exponentially growing during the second stage. Good times were rolling, and the mouse population reached a peak of 2200, below the Universe 25 carrying capacity of 3000.

Problems became evident in Stage 3. Mice, Calhoun had argued, were a highly social mammal with structures that in some ways mirrored humans. First, although there was technically enough space in Universe 25 for all of the mice, some areas and feeders became completely unused, while other sections became perilously overcrowded. Some male mice with limited social roles began congregating in the center of Universe 25. They became engaged in fights and deviant sexual behavior, raping both female and male mice. They engaged in cannibalism and many sported battle scars and no tails as things devolved.

I'm going to note that there is a fascinating gender disparity in births among most mammals, humans included. On average traditionally with people there are approximately 106 boys born for every 100 girls. The gender ratio evens out to 50/50 by adulthood and then slowly women overtake men in older age cohorts and go on statistically to outlive them. The reason for this is that testosterone laden, risk taking boys are more likely to Darwin themselves out from accidents, suicides, fighting and wars every step of the way in young life and remain at greater risk from heart attacks and the like even once they've outgrown and survived their youthful follies.

I wonder in this mouse Utopia, with no natural predators to take out the more adventurous males, if the breeding age population was becoming imbalanced. The fighting mice began raiding breeding nests, killing baby mice. The breeding males began fighting with them and the mother mice became protective of their territory. Soon this spilled over into antisocial behaviors by the mother mice, who began exiling especially their older male offspring. Eventually the mothers began killing their own babies. Baby mice mortality reached 90% in this stage.

The young mice that did survive this stage, which Calhoun described as Behavioral Sink, had no idea how to interact socially with other mice. Many developed an aversion to sex and stopped reproducing. The few that did abandoned their offspring to die. Calhoun noted the last conception after 900 days of the Universe 25 experiment.

Some of these mice, rather than fighting with the roving gangs in the center of the floor, became isolated loners. They found an apartment near a feeding station, stopped mating, did not interact with other mice in any way, and obsessively groomed and preened their coats. Calhoun dubbed these mice as "the beautiful ones" for their glowing fur and keen intelligent eyes. I can't help but wonder what these mice would have done with a selfie equipped smartphone and access to Instagram. Calhoun noted however, a spiritual death in these mice, as they lacked any social roles, and were just waiting to die.

I was fascinated by the eventual 100% death rate of the population of Universe 25. "I mean, if these beautiful ones loner mice were able to carve out a little space alone there, wouldn't you think that some small population of, let's call them survivalist mice, wouldn't do the same with their little mouse family?" I mused to my 15 year old daughter. The survivalist outback family seems to be a common theme in dystopian novels.

"You'd think a few would." My daughter quipped back. She'd already said that she'd likely be one of the beautiful ones, even though she's not on social media and doesn't like cameras.

"It gets even weirder though. The researcher decided to pluck some of the younger beautiful ones out of Universe 25 and drop them in an entirely new setup with normal mice, just to see what happened. Do you think that now they started acting normal and started reproducing?" I asked my teenager.

"I would guess no." She responded back.

I sighed. "And you'd be correct. He noted that the mice showed an apathetic attitude towards their new surroundings, and found a corner near a feeding station where they could continue their obsessive preening, until they eventually died of old age. Hence the 100% extinction rate." I'd seen similar behavior with cats who if abandoned as very young kittens never made good mothers. They usually just abandoned their own offspring.

I've been pondering the implications of Universe 25 for human populations. The much shorter lifespan of mice means this would be stretched out over a span of several generations, perhaps several hundred years. Do we see aspects that seem similar to the Behavioral Sink? There's deviant sexual behavior, abortion and infanticide, broken family dynamics, violence, narcissism and self obsession.

Then there's the litter box issue. Have you heard about the last one? Apparently this is actually a thing. Some children and adolescents in America are self identifying as cats, or furries. They groom themselves in classrooms, only respond to the correct type of meow, and lash out and hiss at those who upset them. Some actually want a litter box placed in bathrooms.

I'll note that cats, real cats anyways, are not as antisocial as they are made out to be, if many pictures of my kitties cuddling with each other is anything to go by. But I have trouble comprehending how any child beyond the age of four or so could engage in any meaningful social interactions with such an identity. I guess they're labeling themselves as different from the social dogs (dawgs?) on the center of the floor?

Of course, we are not mice. I remember that being my absolute first thought on seeing a video documentary about Universe 25 in high school and how it tied in to China's One Child Policy. In the late 1960's on the heels of the disastrous famine caused by Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward, the Chinese were having babies like crazy, peaking at an average of six live births per woman. It turns out that throughout the world war and famine actually create the perfect conditions for explosive population growth immediately following it, as some survival instinct is activated. Or perhaps women, seeing the horrors of such things, no longer assume that all of their children will survive to adulthood, so they have as many as they can.

China's controversial One Child Policy came on the heels of this. I remember watching the documentary about this in high school and being horrified as a mother at eight months pregnant was forced to abort her child. She cried as she became aware that it was her long desired daughter. But what could she do? Incremental social pressure had been applied throughout her pregnancy and her husband would lose his job if this child was allowed to live. The family would be pariahs and social outcasts. I thought to myself that if I wanted the baby that badly I would go somewhere else. I never cared much for China after that.

A deeper dive into the related issues of Universe 25 and China's One Child Policy, written in circa 2010, is available here:

https://www.ppcc.edu/parley/articles/lab-rats-escape-from-universe-25-and-chinas-one-child-policy

I think the conclusion the authors reach is much too forgiving of leadership. They seem to imply that Chinese elites, acting on this information under the assumption that it showed what the future held, had no choice but to enact drastic policies to stop an apocalypse. Thus children were pitted against the survival of the population as a whole. It's always bad when you start sacrificing children.

I would love to see the Universe 25 experiment repeated in modern times. Yes let's give the mice smartphones. Do they play games on the screen for tokens all day? Do they take selfies and interact with them? Are other mice seen on the screen viewed the same way as real life flesh and blood mice? Or do they ignore those silly screens because they are just mice?

What would these results point to about future reproductive capabilities of our current young?  Even before Covid madness codified isolation and antisocial behaviors, these children were interacting with screens exponentially more than any generation in history. Now that seems to be viewed as the path forward for them. Recess is canceled, permanently. Children playing with other children in real life is a thing of the past. When the time is right will they be capable of making children of their own and caring for them? Or will they be permanently scarred? 

Has something else changed since the 1960's that would make the results of Universe 25 different now? Perhaps there has been an evolution of all creatures, or an interpretation of the results in ways that point towards a more optimistic future. Perhaps God has always had a special place for human conscious and creative spirit that cannot compare to other creatures. John Calhoun himself understood the limitations of his mice and rat experiments and argued that these should guide a future of more purpose filled human interactions. 

The mice most certainly didn't have elite mice trying to call all of the shots. Their hierarchy was much more simple. The main objection to the Universe 25 experiment is found in the name. There were 24 mouse and rat topias that preceded it. Most of the other experiments likewise dealt with conditions of unlimited food and limited space. Most had the same results of total extinction. In the few where limited food and unlimited space was provided, however, the lab rats moved around, were fruitful and multiplied. Eventually equilibrium was achieved and the lab rats lived in peace and prosperity. This, it should be noted, most closely mirrors natural conditions as God intended them. If we were to extrapolate that out to humans then living in a pod with a UBI playing meaningless games and snapping meaningless selfies starts sounding like the best path towards species extinction. And that's even before the powers that be start deciding to take us out for our own good.

Freedom wins. Perhaps the elites are doing us all a favor by causing shortages, inflation and hardship. They're saving the human race!

What do you all think?