烏托邦鼠實驗(Utopia Rats Experiment) 宇宙25號(Universe 25)=飽食不想活

The Utopia Rats experiment, officially called "Universe 25", was a behavioral study conducted by American ethologist John B. Calhoun in the 1960s and 1970s. The experiment was designed to explore the effects of overpopulation on social behavior. Calhoun created an enclosed space that could support up to 3,840 mice, with ample food, water, and nesting material. The mice were free from predators and diseases, and all of their basic needs were provided.

 

Key Details of the Experiment:

 

Setup: The environment (called "Universe 25") was a 9-foot-square enclosure divided into four interconnected sections, with nesting areas and resources placed to support a large population of mice.

 

Initial Phase: The population grew rapidly in the early stages, with the mice reproducing quickly in an environment free of threats. This phase was characterized by normal social and reproductive behaviors.

 

Overpopulation and Behavioral Sink: As the population grew closer to its capacity, things began to deteriorate:

 

Social Breakdown: Aggression, violence, and social withdrawal became common. Many mice were unable to establish territories or engage in normal reproductive behavior.

 

Behavioral Sink: This term, coined by Calhoun, described the collapse of social structure and behaviors. In Universe 25, some mice became hyper-aggressive, while others withdrew and stopped participating in reproduction or normal social activities.

 

"The Beautiful Ones": A subset of mice, mostly males, began grooming themselves obsessively and isolating from others. They ceased mating and showed no interest in social interaction.

 

Population Decline: Despite the abundance of resources, the mice stopped reproducing, and the population began to decline. Eventually, the colony collapsed, with almost all social behaviors breaking down.

 

(What is the experiment with rats in a utopia?
UNIVERSE 25: John Calhoun crouches within his rodent utopia-turned-dystopia that, at its peak, housed approximately 2,200 mice. Calhoun was studying the breakdown of social bonds that occurs under extreme overcrowding, following up on his earlier discovery of the learned "behavioral sink" phenomenon in rats.May 28, 2024)

 

(What was the rat experiment where they all died?
In John B. Calhoun's early crowding experiments, rats were supplied with everything they needed – except space. The result was a population boom, followed by such severe psychological disruption that the animals died off to extinction.)

 

(What did the rat experiment prove?
Genetic variation, such as better peripheral vision, can make some rats “bright” and others “dull”, but does not determine their intelligence. Nonetheless, Tryon's famous rat-maze experiment demonstrated that the difference between rat performances was genetic since their environments were controlled and identical.)

 

(Why did the mouse utopia experiment fail?
A social imbalance also took place among the mice: One-third emerged as socially dominant. The other two-thirds turned out less socially adept than their forebearers. As bonding skills diminished among the mice, Universe 25 went into a slow but irreversible decline.)

 

(Is the rat drowning experiment real?
In the 1950s, Curt Richter, a professor at Johns Hopkins, did a famous drowning rats psychology experiment. This experiment, though cruel, demonstrated the power of hope and resilience in overcoming difficult situations.Jul 16, 2024)

 

Conclusions:

Calhoun believed that the experiment demonstrated the negative consequences of overpopulation and social crowding. The social collapse in Universe 25 was linked to a loss of meaningful social roles and overcrowding, even in the absence of physical deprivation.

 

The Utopia Rats experiment is often interpreted as a commentary on human urbanization and population growth, suggesting that excessive crowding and lack of social roles may lead to societal breakdown. However, it has also been critiqued, especially for drawing direct parallels between human and animal behavior.

 

H/t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink 

 

Explanation

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The specific voluntary crowding of rats to which the term "behavioral sink" refers is thought to have resulted from the earlier involuntary crowding: individual rats became so used to the proximity of others while eating that they began to associate feeding with the company of other rats. Calhoun eventually found a way to prevent this by changing some of the settings and thereby decreased mortality somewhat, but the overall pathological consequences of overcrowding remained.^[13]

Further, researchers argued that "Calhoun's work was not simply about density in a physical sense, as number of individuals-per-square-unit-area, but was about degrees of social interaction."^[14] "Social density" appears to be key.

Applicability to humans

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Calhoun had phrased much of his work in anthropomorphic terms, in a way that made his ideas highly accessible to a lay audience.^[7]

Calhoun himself saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of humankind. He characterized the social breakdown as a "spiritual death",^[10] with reference to bodily death as the "second death" mentioned in the Biblical verse Revelation 2:11.^[10]

Controversy exists over the implications of the experiment. Psychologist Jonathan Freedman's experiment recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on human behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness, and general unpleasantness. He declared to have found no appreciable negative effects in 1975.^[15]

The 1962 Scientific American article came at a time when overpopulation had become a subject of great public interest, and had a considerable cultural influence.^[16] However, such discussions often oversimplified the original findings in various ways. It should however be noted that the work has another message than, for example, Paul Ehrlich's now widely disputed^[17][18][19] book The Population Bomb.

Calhoun's worries primarily concerned a human population surge and a potentially independent increase in urbanization as an early stage of rendering much a given society functionally sterile. Under such circumstances society will move from some modality of overpopulation towards a much more irredeemable underpopulation. This has been seen in urban populations that have long been noted to have lower fertility than their rural counterparts,^[20] but growing use of especially digital media is likely to end up depressing rural population growth as well.^[21] As of today this primarily concerns elite population decline,^[22] but can due to positive feedback in social diffusion have Calhoun's empirical predictions apply to a much wider segment of society as well.

 

"烏托邦鼠實驗"（Utopia Rats Experiment），正式名稱為“宇宙25號”（Universe 25），是美國動物行為學家約翰·B·卡爾霍恩（John B. Calhoun）在20世紀60年代至70年代進行的行為實驗，旨在研究過度擁擠對社會行為的影響。卡爾霍恩創造了一個封閉空間，足夠容納3840隻小鼠，提供了充足的食物、水源和築巢材料。實驗環境無捕食者和疾病威脅，所有基本需求都得到了滿足。

 

實驗的關鍵細節：

實驗設置：實驗環境（被稱為“宇宙25號”）是一個9平方英尺的封閉區，分為四個相互連接的部分，裏麵有供大規模小鼠群體使用的巢穴和資源。

 

初始階段：在早期階段，群體數量快速增長，小鼠在沒有威脅的環境下快速繁殖，這一階段表現出正常的社會和繁殖行為。

 

過度擁擠與行為崩潰：當群體接近最大容量時，情況開始惡化：

 

社會崩潰：小鼠之間的攻擊性行為、暴力和社交退縮變得普遍。許多小鼠無法建立自己的領地或參與正常的繁殖行為。

 

行為崩潰：卡爾霍恩創造了“行為崩潰”這一術語，來形容社會結構和行為的瓦解。在宇宙25號實驗中，一些小鼠變得過度攻擊，而另一些則完全退縮，停止參與繁殖或正常的社會活動。

“美麗者”：其中一部分小鼠，主要是雄性，開始過度梳理自己，遠離其他小鼠，不再交配，也不關心社交活動。

 

群體衰退：盡管資源仍然豐富，小鼠卻停止了繁殖，群體數量開始減少，最終整個群體崩潰，幾乎所有社會行為都分崩離析。

 

結論：

卡爾霍恩認為實驗表明了過度擁擠和社會擁塞的負麵後果。宇宙25號的社會崩潰與社會角色的喪失和過度擁擠有關，即使在沒有物質匱乏的情況下也是如此。

 

“烏托邦鼠實驗”常被解讀為對人類城市化和人口增長的隱喻，暗示過度擁擠和社會角色的缺失可能導致社會崩潰。然而，該實驗也受到了一些批評，特別是直接將人類和動物行為進行類比的部分。

 

Blessings to bring peace to all you meet,