Colhoun had been creating utopian environments for rats and mice since the 1940s, with consistent results: overpopulation leads to explosive violence and hypersexual activity, followed by asexuality, self-destruction, and extinction.Apr 20, 2023.
"Behavioral sink" is a term invented by ethologist John B.
Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior which can result from overcrowding.
The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962..
In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers created a series of "rat utopias" – enclosed spaces in which rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth..
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..
Early Rodent Studies
Supplying the critters with unlimited food and water, he expected to see their population swell to 5,000 over the course of the 28-month experiment.
However, the population capped out at 200 after subdividing into smaller groups, each of which comprised merely a dozen individuals..
Why do we use rats? The laboratory rat has made invaluable contributions to cardiovascular medicine, neural regeneration, wound healing, diabetes, transplantation, behavioural studies and space motion sickness research.
Rats have also been widely used to test drug efficacy and safety..
In the 1962 study
The specific voluntary crowding of rats to which the term "behavioral sink" refers is thought to have resulted from the earlier involuntary
Calhoun himself saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of humankind
• Hikikomori• Mrs
• Fessenden, Marissa 2015, How 1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity, Smithsonian Magazine
Experiment studying human circadian clocks
Burrowing rodent; one of only two known eusocial rodents
