That Time a Guy Tried to Build a Utopia for Mice and it all Went to Hell

just probably get started I do want to thank brilliant for sponsoring this video today to sport today I found out and learn more about brilliant go to brilliant dollar walk slash their found out and sign up for free in 1968 an expert on animal behavior and population control called John the Calhoun built what was essentially a utopia for mice that was purpose-built to satisfy their every need that's why going out of his way to ensure the inhabitants of his perfect Mouse society never wanted for anything within two years virtually the entire population was dead so what happens dubbed universe 25 Calhoun's Mouse utopia was built with the needs of its Mouse inhabitants firmly in mind and was designed to specifically cater to their every whim containing plentiful food water bedding and at least initially space the enclosure was described as follows a tank 101 inches square enclosed by walls 54 inches high the first 37 inches of wall was structured so that the mice could climb up but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above each wall had 16 vertical mesh tunnels called them stairwells soldered to it for horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell leading to four nesting boxes this means 256 boxes in total each capable of holding 15 mice well-versed in Rhoda populations from dozens of previous experiments something that's kind of apparent when you realize that the enclosure was called universe 25 calhoun anticipated that his mouse paradise could reliably ends more importantly comfortably housed 3840 mice before that though he needed to pick the proverbial adam and eve of his mouse garden of eden calhoun eventually settled on four breeding pairs of mice specifically bred for the experiment and hands picked from the most healthy specimens from the National Institute of Health's own breeding colony now before we get into discussing what happened next we should give some background information about how this experiment came to be and what it was hoping to accomplish prior to creating universe 25 Calhoun had performs a number of similar experiments with rodents that started all the way back in the 1940s all of these ended in failure when the population either stalled turns on itself for example in one experiment Calhoun created an enclosure that could easily have housed 5000 raps but the eventual population never rose above 200 despite unlimited food unlimited water and a complete absence of any predators or any threats furthermore Calhoun noticed that began despite ample space his rodents would often crowd together which resulted in a breakdown of social structure amongst the population this unusual phenomenon led Calhoun to coin the phrase behavioral sync to describe what he felt was the inevitable collapse of any overpopulated society Calvin's experiments eventually caught the eye of the National Institute of Mental Health or NIH who are intrigued about the observed effects of overpopulation in rodents specifically if any of the observed phenomenon could be applied to humans to this ends the ni MH gave Calhoun access to a small piece of lands that they owned in Maryland and the funding that was needed to construct universe 25 the stated goal of the experiment was simply to see whether a perfect society would flourish initially the experiments it proved successful and the mice lived in relative harmony and within a year the population of eight super healthy mice had swelled to a respectable 620 members great care was taken to ensure the mice were taken care of food and water it was unlimited which allowed the mice to eat or drink whenever they pleased and there was always space and clean bedding available so females could rear yang in peace and safety despite this calhoun noticed that after day 35 of the experiment things started going wrong first of all there was a noticeable drop in population growth while initially the population of the mouse heaven had doubled every 55 days after day 315 it doubled according to Calhoun's notes approximately every 145 days this made little sense as there was still ample space to house another 3,000 mice in addition to a drop in population growth Calhoun also noticed an abrupt change in behavior in both males and females the social bonds broke down and male mice without a reason to defend their territory or food source since both were plentiful became dejected forming cakes that randomly attacked one another for seemingly no reason females similarly began abandoning young or even attacked them and slowly but surely both males and females simply stopped breeding in the lead-up to they're certain of the male mice began continued mating with whatever mouse happened to be around viet male or female many of the mice also began to simply kill and eat one another despite the abundance of other food sources mothers also abandoned their babies mice would crowd together in groups of 50 or more in pens designed to hold 15 individuals while pens with plentiful bedding sat completely empty just inches away most intriguing of all we're a small group of males and females who withdrew themselves from Mouse society altogether to live in the upper levels of the enclosure that Calhoun described as the beautiful ones these mice did nothing but sleep eat and groom themselves and this gave them noticeably smoother looking coats which along with their isolation meaning no scars from attacks led to their nickname they seemingly lost interest in all meaningful social bonds and refused to interact or mate the last birth in universe 25 took place on day 600 and from that moment on the population it slowly dwindled even when the population rescinded to levels where the mice have previously flourished they refused to breed or go back to their old way of interacting a few months later all of the mice were dead Calhoun noted that although the population had survived for many months afterwards it it effectively died on the 315th day the day the social bonds broke down stating their spirit has died the first death they are no longer capable of executing the more complex behaviors compatible with species survival the species in such settings die Calhoun saw his experiments as a warning bell for humanity with his belief being that overpopulation would inevitably lead to social collapse and thus the extinction of the human race others have taken a less knee allistic view of his work and believed that his results are comparable to what would happen in a human society as after all we are slightly more complex and self-aware creatures than mice that said what's often lost in Calhoun's work is what came after in which he continued to research and tweak environments or variables to try and find ways to keep the mice from going down the extinction path even as the population density grew and in fact he had some success of this for instance in one case via simply encouraging creativity in certain mice by various means giving them a sort of purpose here it actually works with the creative mice continuing to thrive well beyond what if otherwise been expected from the previous experiments in the ends whatever ones opinion of whether Calhoun's work is actually relevant to humans it's still kind of fascinating that a near rodent utopia resulted in the mouse equivalent of the purge now if you enjoyed watching today's episode and hey look here you are at the end of it then the chances are that you like it when complex concepts like societal structure are broken down and made easy to understand and that's where today's sponsor brilliant comes into the picture now I can't promise that brilliant are gonna teach you about Mouse societies but if you want to learn complex scientific concepts in an enjoyable and easy way then brilliant is for you brilliant work through something called active learning they explain a scientific concept to you in an easy-to-understand way often with plenty of examples like we did in today's video then you solve a problem based on what you just learned and before you know it you understand really complex subjects if you want to understand things in the real world you do need these practical examples just memorizing formulas it's not really gonna be much help brilliant can provide you the toolkit to think through problems and solve them it's remarkable how what you can learn can become immediately applicable and solving problems like this is actually a pretty addictive learning process so you could support today I found out and learn more about brilliant by going to brilliant org slash today I found out and signing up for free also the first 200 people that go through that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription and as always thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 1,960,904

Rating: 4.9050956 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, Mouse Population, Utopia for Mice, Guy Tried to Build a Utopia for Mice, Demise of a Mouse Population, John B. Calhoun, John B. Calhoun facts, Universe 25, Calhoun’s mouse utopia

Id: 5m7X-1V9nOs

Length: 7min 57sec (477 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/PitchforkAssistant]

We are running a best of contest. If you nominate posts, you'll have a chance to win some reddit platinum.

[u/cyberneticninjakille]

There’s a video series called “Down The Rabbit Hole” with an episode on this that’s longer and more detailed if anyone is interested. They’re all on YouTube.

Edit: Link

[u/theradek123]

Anyone remember that time a guy tried to build this underwater utopia and it all went to hell too?

[u/LudoAshwell]

How can a prison be an utopia?

[u/mistersaturn90]

i desperately urge you to check out the one on the collier brothers. the whole series down the rabbit hole is downright amazing, he puts so much effort into research and into his videos, guy deserves 10m subs.

[u/Cuclean]

There’s no such place as Mouseville...

[u/Heavyweighsthecrown]

It's weird that no one (from the story) brings up an explanation that seems obvious to me: in every new generation of mice, the offspring is limited to learning behaviours from older mice in the utopia - who also learned behaviours from older mice in the utopia. Of course it all goes to shit, because sooner or later mice don't know how to mate, how to be social, how territory works, how to do all their basic social stuff...they're all copying behaviours from the mice next to them...so all their 'culture' so to speak is reduced to eating and shitting. Because all the old standard mouse behaviour (from standard mouse instincts) suddenly doesn't fit this new model anymore.

My uneducated hypothesis is that it would become an actual 'utopia for mice' if newer mice (from outside the experiment) were introduced in it with every new generation.

[u/ArtigoQ]

Organisms must struggle or they will atrophy.

[u/borg6510]

I am reminded of what agent Smith told Morpheus in The Matrix on how the perfect utopia program for humans was created only to end in disaster.