What Was the Mouse Utopia? (2017) [video]

I'd like to see a replication of the Mouse Utopia experiment. It seems to have the character of a lot of the "Failed to replicate" studies in psychology and sociology. The study finds a conclusion that is directly applicable to the issue of the day (overpopulation and overcrowding in Calhoun's time) and has an interesting metaphorical attention getting alarm to it ("We humans are the rats!").

One problem that stood out to me is how the mice in Calhoun's experiment are any different than any other kind of laboratory or pet mice. They are given unlimited access to food and water - but, aren't all pets and lab animals given all the food and water they want? What's special about these?

Another problem is that Calhoun does a lot of evaluating rat behavior. They all eat together - is that abnormal? Some of the rats and lazy, and live by themselves. Is that abnormal? Some rats kill their young and the infant mortality rate rises as population density does. Is that abnormal?

I'd like to see a modern recreation of it, along with better statistical representation of the data and the changes over time. If it's possible, I think a control setup should be added, where the rats in the control "universe" would have to engage in activities like their natural behavior to get food.

Very interesting, never heard of this before. I gave this some thought, and I think I can come up with a simple reason for the observed behavior and also why it does not apply to humans. Female mice mate with dominant, territorial male mice who's role after conception is to defend the nest from the attack of rival males, who will kill/cannibalize the babies if given the chance. At some population density, there are way too many rival mice for a dominant male to defend, and this reproductive strategy breaks down. The imagined limiting conditions like food and housing were not the actual limiting condition of the colony - the killer rivals were. Human females don't form harems under the protection of dominant males, and thus this would not be a limiting factor for humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGLFozNM2o Here's another video, with more details about Calhoun's other experiments before Universe 25, and historical context around them.

People can talk about replication problems but the fact that this happened even once is interesting. I would claim that the reason the rats went extinct was because they were put in an environment that was far too different from their natural environment to survive. The question for people is not how do deal with overpopulation the question is why aren't we experiencing overpopulation.