In 1962, Calhoun wrote about his research in an article for the Scientific American called “Population Density and Social Pathology.” In this article, he coined the term “behavior sink” to describe the breakdown of social functions and population collapse that stemmed from overcrowding in his rodent enclosures.Ĭalhoun described this behavioral sink as a kind of para-pathology that appears from, and succeeds upon, the behavior of individual animals within a group. After that, the mice would either become hostile or form cliques or passive and anti-social.Then, the society would reach a leveling-off point.At first, the mice would meet, mate, and breed abundantly.All the experiments would lead to the same sequence of events: He continued studying rats throughout the 1950s, building more complex enclosures for the rats to examine how they would behave in an environment where they never lacked food and water, and that was predator-free. Ultimately, this caused a psychological breakdown and the rat society would collapse and they would become extinct. That lead to unwanted interaction, which made them hostile and withdrawn. So, as the rat population increased, it became difficult for individuals to control how often they had social contact. This confirmed Calhoun’s central contention that there is a limit to the number of meaningful interactions individuals can cope with before stress enters the picture. During the study, the rats subdivided themselves into small groups of up to 12 individuals.Ĭalhoun noted that 12 was the maximum number of rats that could live in harmony anything beyond that would lead to stress and psychological effects causing the group to break. The rat population was expected to reach 5,000 over the course of the experiment however, the population never grew beyond 200 and it stabilized at 150. The colony of Norway rats was enclosed in a 10,000 square-foot outdoor pen, where they were supplied with unlimited water and food. That year, he started a 28-month study of a colony of Norway rats at Johns Hopkins University. His experimental research started in 1947. He was focused on the problem of crowding, which led him to conduct a series of experiments and studies using rats and mice as subjects. But why? And what does that mean for humans? Well, that is exactly the point of this article today.Ĭalhoun dedicated his entire career to the study of population density and its effects on behavior. In essence, he created a perfect society of mice to study their behavior and see if they would thrive. For this study, he built a mice utopia purposefully designed to provide the mice with everything they needed and satisfy their every whim. Calhoun, an American ethologist, and behavioral researcher, created the Universe 25 Project. Effect of psychosocial stimulation on the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis and metabolism of noradrenaline and adrenaline. Henry JP, Stephens PM, Axelrod J, Mueller RA.The use of psychosocial stimuli to induce prolonged systolic hypertension in mice. Observations on the heart, kidney and aorta. The role of psychosocial factors in the development of arteriosclerosis in CBA mice. Henry JP, Ely DL, Stephens PM, Ratcliffe HL, Santisteban GA, Shapiro AP.Some significant obstetric trends in a metropolitan area. SOCIAL PATHOLOGY OF FOETAL AND INFANT LOSS. Population density and pathology: what are the relations for man? Science.
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