As a result extreme population densities developed in the pen adopted for eating, leaving the others with sparse populations. Individual rats would rarely eat except in the company of other rats. As many as 60 of the 80 rats in each experimental population would assemble in one pen during periods of feeding. The animals would crowd together in greatest number in one of the four interconnecting pens in which the colony was maintained.
#Universe 74 rat utopia series
The common source of these disturbances became most dramatically apparent in the populations of our first series of three experiments, in which we observed the development of what we called a behavioral sink. The social organization of the animals showed equal disruption. Among the males the behavior disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic overactivity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. An even greater number, after successfully giving birth, fell short in their maternal functions.
#Universe 74 rat utopia full
Many were unable to carry pregnancy to full term or to survive delivery of their litters if they did. In the 1962 study, Calhoun described the behavior as follows: Here is the main part of the article today: I've underlined what I think would be crucial aspects of the article if someone's goal were to understand the findings of the experiments. The only known counter to the effect of the behavioral sink is to reduce the frequency and intensity of social interaction. There are eating disorders in human populations, drug and alcohol use rises. Actual physical disease, mental illness, and psychosomatic disorders increase. Notable conditions in the behavioral sink include hyperaggression, failure to breed and nurture young normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality at all ages, and abnormal sexual patterns. Thus social density is considered more critical than geometric spatial density. When forced interactions exceed some threshold, social norms break down. Subsequent studies involving humans have shown it is not mere lack of space that causes the behavioral sink it is the necessity for community members to interact with one another. Population peaked at 80 rats and thereafter exhibited a variety of abnormal, often destructive behaviors his conclusion was that space itself is a necessity. This study has become a touchstone of urban sociology and psychology in general the term has passed into common use.Ĭalhoun provided a cage of rats with food and water replenished to support any increase in population, but the cage was fixed at a size considered sufficient for only 50 rats.
Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on rats on a farmland in Rockfille, Maryland which resulted in the publication of an article titled Crowding into the Behavioral Sink (Scientific American, 206: 139-148) a study of behavior under conditions of overcrowding. Here is the article as it stood a few years ago: They stop reproducing as one of many negative social behaviors caused by excessive social interactions. At some point, their population maxes out-but not because of food or water or even space. They were wonderful insights into what happens when you provide a population with abundant food and water over generations of time in a limited living space. You may be familiar with the rat and mouse utopia experiments conducted in the 50s-70s. Here is a wonderful example I stumbled upon today. They do other things, too, like completely delete factual content, and replace it with extremely misleading content that does a poor job at representing a true accounting of the topic, but a great job at supporting their agenda. For example, on a given topic, they will frame aspects that are non-congruent with their ideology as under controversy, even if they are not, and aspects that are controversial but congruent as consensus when, in fact, they are not. Wikipedia engages in several tactics to warp its content to align with their ideology. One of the project's co-founders often publicly complains about it. Wikipedia has a well-known, intentional, leftist bias. I'll elaborate on the topic in a future book.įor now, let's consider one example of this.Īlthough billed as an open encyclopedia, Wikipedia is increasingly neither of those things.
You'll find this referred to in the scriptures as "changing the times and seasons." It's worthy of your study. We are living in a time when an active cohort of people is attempting to override reality through assertion, rather than reason or right. I'll try to make this one short and sweet.
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