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Mouse utopia experiment criticism8/28/2023 ![]() ![]() In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, an alarmist work suggesting that the overcrowded world was about to be swept by famine and resource wars. The issue made the cover of Time magazine in January 1960. Pioneering ecologists such as William Vogt and Fairfield Osborn were cautioning that the growing population was putting pressure on food and other natural resources as early as 1948, and both published bestsellers on the subject. They were a warning, made in a postwar society already rife with alarm over the soaring population of the United States and the world. He had been building utopian environments for rats and mice since the 1940s, with thoroughly consistent results. As the name Universe 25 suggests, it was not the first time Calhoun had built a world for rodents. But its downfall was already certain-not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.Ĭalhoun’s concern was the problem of abundance: overpopulation. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. Heaven.įour breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68☏, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health’s breeding colony. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels-call them stairwells-soldered to it. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. Every aspect of Universe 25-as this particular model was called-was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. ![]()
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