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Of the strange research to come out of mid-1900s America, there is little with a legacy as

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enduring or as terrifying as the Mouse Utopia experiments. Taking place throughout the 50s,

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60s, and early 70s, the grim fate of the subjects was published in the national magazine Scientific

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American, and the experiments themselves were largely taken as apocalyptic portents. In a post-war United

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States, the language used to describe the results such as behavior sync became synonymous with fears

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of an overpopulated world and violent, deviant behavior in cities. Today, they are preserved

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within fiction such as Channel 4's conspiracy thriller Utopia and the classic animated movie

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The Secret of NIMH. So what were the Mouse Utopia experiments?

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Shortly after World War II, a group known collectively as the Environmentalists were making a large push

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to prevent environmental degradation, as well as over-exploitation of the planet's renewable

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resources. Among these people were a group specifically known as the Neo-Malthusians, a term referring to the

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18th and 19th century English scholar Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus proposed that, while the world's

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population may increase exponentially, food production can only increase linearly, leading to an eventual

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subsistence-level existence for the human race that became known as a Malthusian catastrophe. While

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advancements such as the Green Revolution saw that this didn't come about, the Neo-Malthusians

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acknowledged his concerns about overpopulation and feared that this pattern would result in the

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collapse of civilization or, at best, have extreme adverse effects. These fears were given a platform

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in writing of the time, especially in works such as William Folk's Road to Survival in 1948, and perhaps

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most famously Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962. Before the movement's explosion of population,

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popularity in the 50s and 60s, however, researchers had already begun work investigating

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the effects of population growth, and among them was a man named John B. Calhoun. Born in 1917, Calhoun took

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an early interest in science, specifically ornithology, publishing his first paper on birds when he was 15,

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but over time, his interest would change. By the time he received his PhD, his focus had turned to

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ethology, the study of animal behavior. When his education was concluded, he moved with his family

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to Towson, Maryland to begin research at John Hopkins University in nearby Baltimore, but the research

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itself would be conducted much closer to home. In 1947, shortly after he arrived, he approached his

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neighbor about using some of their neglected property for an experiment. The scope would be massive, and

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according to Calhoun, his neighbor probably didn't expect such a scale when they agreed to let him

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use the forested area. Taking over a quarter of an acre, Calhoun constructed a massive habitat, complete

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with food, water, ample shelter, and protection from predators, with the only limiting condition being

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their restriction to the quarter acre living space. He affectionately provided his enclosure a name,

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Rat City. Unfortunately, no publicly available images of Rat City exist. Calhoun was very familiar

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with Norway rats, having performed research on them for his doctorate, and he estimated that Rat City

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could sustain approximately 5,000 individuals, though if they reached this number, the population density

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would be tight. He began by placing five pregnant females in the enclosure, providing ample genetic diversity,

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and soon the population was increasing exponentially. But then something surprising happened. Rather than

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the population increasing to fill the space of the enclosure, it quickly leveled off at 150 members.

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He also noted some behavioral peculiarities. Despite the large size of Rat City, the residents seemed to

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gather around just a few places, forming social groups of 12 and limiting themselves to specific feeding

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locations. He would conclude the experiment after two years and four months, during which the population

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never grew over 200. Careful observation revealed the cause, high infant mortality. For some reason,

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as the experiment progressed and the population increased, the mothers were not caring for their

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young properly, leading to most of them dying before reaching maturity. Calhoun had his theories as to

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why this was, but to prove them he would need more data. In 1954, about five years after his initial

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experiment concluded, he was hired by the National Institute of Mental Health, often shortened to NIMH.

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Within the Laboratory of Psychology, Calhoun was given ample resources to continue his work. With a team,

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he began feverishly designing and constructing habitats, sometimes referred to as universes,

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where he performed numerous smaller scale and more controlled versions of his original rat study

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on a domesticated strain of albino Norway rat. These rats would want for nothing. All physical needs

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for a healthy rat lifestyle would be provided for them, including food, water, climate control,

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and nesting material. Calhoun spent eight years perfecting his enclosures and methods until finally,

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in February of 1962, an article of his writing was published in the magazine Scientific American.

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The article was entitled, Population Density and Social Pathology. His opening paragraph ominously

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reads so, quote, In the celebrated thesis of Thomas Malthus, vice and misery impose the ultimate natural

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limit on the growth of populations. Students of the subject have given most of their attention to misery,

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that is, to predation, disease, and food supply, as forces that operate to adjust the size of a

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population to its environment. But what a vice. Setting aside the moral burden of this word,

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what are the effects of the social behavior of a species on population growth, and of population

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density on social behavior? Unquote. To answer this question, he cited six of his experiments in

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particular, all with similar composition and concerningly similar results. The design of these

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habitats was simple. The layout was a rectangle measuring 10 feet by 14 feet, divided into four

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equal sections by electric fences. Three of these fences sported bridges over which the rats could

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climb while one fence lacked such a bridge, essentially creating one long space that wrapped in on itself.

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Each section was equipped similarly, with a food hopper, water, and nesting areas accessible by

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spiral staircases. But Calhoun, leveraging his experience with the rats, made special changes to

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encourage specific behaviors. He enticed the rats to use one of the center pens by making the spiral

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staircase to that pen's living spaces shorter than the others, though he admits this was a comparatively

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small factor. But the more insidious change was to their food supply. In half of the experiments,

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Calhoun supplied powdered food, but in the other half he placed feeders of his own design, consisting

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of hard pellets behind a wire mesh. Half of his experiments began with 32 mice, the other half with

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56, of evenly male and female composition, and all having just reached maturity. Calhoun estimated that

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approximately 40 rats could comfortably be housed in these enclosures, but he would allow these

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populations to increase to 80 before he would cull them. Almost immediately after introduction,

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things began to go awry. The females, unsurprisingly, spread themselves out somewhat evenly through

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the pens, but after the males jockeyed for dominance and those of highest rank were determined,

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they began to distribute themselves strangely. Less dominant male rats will typically awaken earlier

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and begin to wander and forage for food, and due to the design of the pen, this meant that they usually

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would end up in the center sections to eat. During this time, the dominant males of the outer pens would

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wake up and begin guarding their respective territories. Since there was only one entrance

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ramp to either end, the dominant males of either pen would bar the return of the less dominant males,

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forcing the male population to clump in the center pens, while the dominant end males protected what

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came to be their harems. Only a few other deferential males were allowed to remain. These few remaining males

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began exhibiting odd behavior. Though they would spend most of their time in the burrows with the females,

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hiding away from the dominant male, they would never attempt to mate with any of them. Instead, perplexingly,

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they would try to mate with the dominant male, and even more perplexing, the dominant male would not fight these

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attempts. At the same time as this was happening, the effect of Calhoun's special feeders was taking hold.

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Since procuring food was such a lengthy process at the hard food feeders, it was common for one rat to join another

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while in the process of feeding. By this method, the rats slowly became conditioned to eating in the

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company of other rats until, eventually, the rats would refuse to eat unless another rat was present.

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Since more rats tended to be in the center pens, this behavior meant that, over time, more and more rats

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made their way there, further condensing them. This heightened the proximity of an already cramped population.

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In the experiments with the powdered food, this effect was far less pronounced. With these factors combined,

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Calhoun noted what he called a behavioral sink, or an increase in pathological activity in the rats due to the stress involved in such high population density.

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For the females, the behavioral sink manifested in reduced capacity for nest building and young rearing.

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Infant rats are extremely dependent upon their mothers for nearly all things.

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However, under the effects of the behavioral sink, the mothers would often be interrupted

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in their nest-building practices to engage in some other social activity. As time wore on,

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this led to sparser nests which could not house the young properly. If a mother decided to move her litter,

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she often would only move some of them or scatter them about the pen in separate locations.

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What's more, when female rats are ready to mate, the males can sense it, and the enclosed space meant that a female

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could not escape the continuous advances of the males during these periods. Even when they would

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enter their nests for a reprieve, they would be followed in and harrowed. These factors together

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resulted in an extremely high infant mortality rate, in one case reaching 96%. For the males,

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this manifested in different ways. The dominant males would occasionally lash out in violence against

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the other members of the pen, including infants, often biting and wounding their tails. Among the lower-class

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males were three groups. The first he described as the homosexuals, which he immediately corrects as

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pansexuals, who would not compete for status, but would often attempt to mate with any other rat,

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regardless of gender or age. Much like in the end pens, these advances went unchallenged. The second

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group he described as somnambulists, who moved slowly through the pen without interacting with other

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individuals in any fashion, and the other rats in turn ignored them, except in rare circumstances.

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These rats, externally, he described as fat, sleek, and healthy-looking. But to him, the strangest group

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was the third, which he named the Probers. These rats were hyperactive, hypersexual, and pansexual.

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Despite violence from the dominant males, they would viciously pursue females in heat,

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eschewing any sort of courtship ritual and following them into their burrows to mate.

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Later on in the experiments, they would often find the corpses of the improperly cared-for young,

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which they would cannibalize. In time, one of Calhoun's assistants would publicly describe these pens

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as hell. At this point, Calhoun ended the experiments, but he predicted that these pathological changes

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would have eventually led to the deaths of the colonies. At their conclusion, he would take the four

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healthiest males and females and allow them to breed, but their behavior had been so inexorably altered

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that none of their pups survived beyond weaning.

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This short article enraptured its US audience, and the effects on both the scientific world and

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popular culture were immediate. People began to relate Calhoun's rat experiments to modern city life,

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and in an era where fear of social deviance was reaching an extreme high, it was largely seen as

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a reflection of the current time and where society could be heading, egged on by Calhoun's

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provocative language and allegorical design of his test environment, made to look like a city.

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Population density quickly became a common topic. Psychologist Carl Rogers, in his work

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some social issues which concern me, stated that, quote, the resemblance to human behavior

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is frightening. In humans we see poor family relationships, the lack of caring, the complete

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alienation, the magnetic attraction of overcrowding, the lack of involvement which is so great that it

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permits people to watch a long drawn-out murder without so much as calling the police. Perhaps all city

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dwellers are inhabitants of a behavioral sink, unquote. Soon after, studies of dense urban environments were

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conducted to see if these effects translated directly to humans, but what they found was

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inconclusive and unsatisfying. Despite the suggestions of Calhoun's rats, humans in cities

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reacted differently or sometimes opposite the manner that researchers expected, depending on the location.

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No matter how they tried, no evidence of a widespread behavioral sink could be found in urban areas.

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But this did not dissuade Calhoun. Even as others explored the problem of overcrowding,

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Calhoun frantically continued his research. Now a celebrated success and emboldened by the public

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acceptance of his ideas, he resumed his work at NIMH on an even larger scale, though again away from

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the public eye. He spent his time on new subjects as he continued to perfect his enclosures and

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experiments until finally, after 11 years, Calhoun revealed his magnum opus through an article he

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entitled Death Squared, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine

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in January of 1973. The lengthy opening to this article was undeniably apocalyptic. Calhoun wrote,

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I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution.

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Threatening life and evolution are the two deaths, death of the spirit and death of the body. Evolution,

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in terms of ancient wisdom, is the acquisition of access to the tree of life." He goes on to heavily

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reference revelations and of the writers of the apocalypse, using them to proclaim that the

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Hippocratic Oath applies not only to the body, but to the spirit. After this dramatic introduction,

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he described his test. For the most part, these new experiments were similar to his 1963 trials,

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including unlimited access to food and water, protection from the elements and predators,

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and safeguards against disease. Many parts, however, were drastically altered. As Calhoun mentions in his

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introduction, the Norway rats used in his first publicized experiments were replaced with albino

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house mice, which were taken from a breeding group from the National Institutes of Health made

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specifically to prevent communicable disease. To fit his new subjects, Calhoun had designed an entirely

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new enclosure. This version was much more vertical, with 16 wall-mounted housing areas for the rats at

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the tops of long metal tubes, which Calhoun called walk-up apartments. At the bottom of each apartment

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was a virtually unlimited supply of food, water, and nesting material. With the space provided,

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Calhoun estimated that it could potentially hold 3840 mice. He named this enclosure Universe 25.

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Calhoun's methods also had changed. Rather than instituting population controls, he would interfere far

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less. His plan was to place eight mice in the enclosure, four male and four female, and simply

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watch and wait. Calhoun observed four distinct phases in the ensuing experiment. Phase A was

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predictable, constituting the time period before the first new mice were born, which ended up being 104

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days. For the mice, these days were, quote, marked by considerable social turmoil. After the social order

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was established and the first brood was born, the population began phase B, which Calhoun named the

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exploitation phase. During this time, the mice doubled in number every 55 days as new young grew to maturity

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and had their own young. This doubling continued until day 315, after which the doubling rate slowed

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to a rate of 145 days, nearly three times as long. By this point, the different broods had clumped into one

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side of the pen, exhibiting the same sort of clumping as the Norway rats, but this time without any

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coaxing from Calhoun's designs. This change in the rate of procreation marked phase C, which Calhoun

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labeled as the stagnation phase. This is when the most notable events occurred, and they eerily mirrored

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Calhoun's rat experiments. In a natural setting, those mice which find no social niche will leave the colony,

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but in this experiment, emigration was impossible, and so those forced to remain withdrew from society.

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These dejected males formed a large pool in the center of the enclosure. They quickly became

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characterized by both their inactivity and their many scars and wounds. Occasionally, they would grow

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agitated and attack one another, and with nowhere to retreat, the recipient of these attacks would

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simply lay still and endure the assault. The outcast females, rather than joining them, would retreat to the

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highest apartments and live quietly among one another. It was during this time that the behavioral

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sink manifested, with mice gathering around specific food hoppers in large numbers, while others remained

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almost entirely untouched, showing how, again, the need for social interaction had become so intertwined

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with the need for food that the former had overtaken the latter. The males who had won the initial fights

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also were placed under extreme stress. As more and more mice reached maturity from within and without,

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the leaders of the social groups continually had to patrol and defend their territory. Eventually,

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they reached the point of exhaustion and could not defend the females within their group. These females

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were therefore forced to defend the nest themselves, even when nursing their young, leading to generalized

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aggressive behavior. This aggression would inevitably be misdirected onto their young, who would be

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wounded by their mothers and forced to leave the nest before they were finished weaning.

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Much like the rats, the mother mice would also forget some of their young when moving from one

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nesting site to another. Due to the added stress of defending their territory, sometimes the mothers

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would reabsorb unborn mice in the womb, further reducing the fertility rates. Calhoun writes,

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For all practical purposes, there had been a death of societal organization by the end of Phase C.

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Finally, there was Phase D, which Calhoun entitled The Death Phase. This phase was characterized largely

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by an entire generation of young who had been rejected by their mothers early and forced to leave

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the nest, and they were therefore unable to exhibit normal social behavior. This manifested in numerous

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ways. The females of this generation had far fewer children, and those that did have children lacked the

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maternal instincts necessary to raise them beyond weaning. Calhoun goes on to describe the males of

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this generation. Quote, Male counterparts to these non-reproducing females were soon dubbed the

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beautiful ones. They never engaged in sexual approaches toward females, and they never engaged in fighting,

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and so they had no wound or scar tissue. Thus, their pelage remained in excellent condition. Their behavioral

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repertoire became largely confined to eating, drinking, sleeping, and grooming, none of which carried any

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social implications beyond that represented by contiguity of bodies. Unquote. As the last mice with

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reproductive instincts aged beyond their fertility, Calhoun declared that the last male would die around

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day 1780 of the experiment, effectively rendering the colony dead as it would be unable to produce any more

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young. His present tense language implied that, when the article was published, the colony was still

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technically alive, though its final fate was practically sealed. Calhoun closed his article with a call to

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action. For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events

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should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of the demand by

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those capable of filling roles and having expectancies to do so, only violence and disruption of social

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organization can follow. Individuals born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality

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as to be incapable even of alienation. Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented. Acquisition,

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creation, and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial, cultural, conceptual,

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technological society will have been blocked. Just as biological generativity in the mouse involves

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this species most complex behaviors, so does ideational generativity for man. Loss of these

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respective complex behaviors means death of the species.

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But even as Calhoun was performing his research on mice, others had been at work applying his theories

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to humans. By this point, researchers had moved to more specific locations of overcrowding rather than

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the generalized location of cities, testing the effects on students in dormitories and patients at

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hospitals, but the most fruitful example they discovered was in prisons. Paul Paulus from the

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University of Texas wrote that prisons were the perfect place for this sort of study, describing

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the social interaction between inmates as intense, prolonged, inescapable, and realistic. The prison

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in the study also offered the closest analog to Calhoun's rat experiments, since the prisoners could not

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escape the company of others, even in their communal cells. There they found connections between

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over-socialization and suicide, violence, psychopathy, and stress. After such studies, environmental

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psychologists began to discover the problem. They identified two different kinds of density, physical

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density and social density. Physical density was the amount of space per person, while social density

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was the number of individuals occupying a space. They found that social density was the much more

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important factor, as individuals in high social density were unable to control their interactions

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with others. Based on this research, human environments could be designed to at least

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partially mitigate these issues, allowing those living within them the privacy they needed to maintain

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healthy social interaction. Outside of scientific discourse, Calhoun's rhetoric has maintained its

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strength through the years, with different groups of all political persuasions bending his results to

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support their views on social degradation, however they may define it. Among more scholarly sources,

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Calhoun has been both lauded and criticized for his work. Those who support him cite his forward

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thinking about overpopulation, while those who deride him cite his misrepresentation of the actual social

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problems within cities, guiding discourse away from the true causes of societal discord. But no matter what

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those in the modern day think of his research, his influence on the way America views its cities, is undeniable.

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of them.

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of them.

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of them.

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of.

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of Fe being

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So