In 1968, the Americans predicted the fate of mankind with an experiment. They built an ideal world with sufficient resources for mice, thinking that rats could reproduce indefinitely, who knew that male rats refused to socialize, female rats began to eat mice, and eventually the entire rat population was extinct due to psychological pathology. This is the famous "mouse utopia" experiment. The experiment was created by American ethologist and anthropologist John Calhoun.
In the seventies of the last century, John built the "Utopia One" experimental device on an experimental site of the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States. "Utopia One" is a cuboid space with a base area of 270 square meters and a 15 cubic meter high fence erected on all sides.
At each of the four corners of the fence there is an upright mesh tunnel, each of which leads to the fenced living room, where food and water are placed daily. The open space in the middle of the cuboid is a "square" for activities, where there is no threat of natural predators, there is no shortage of food resources, and the only drawback is that space is limited.
John put four pairs of mice into the experimental setup, and the "utopian experiment" began. For the first fifty days of the experiment, the mice reproduced wildly, constantly reproducing their offspring. By day fifty-eight, the rat population had tripled.
The breeding cycle of mice is generally two months, and after four months, that is, a quarter, the number of mice can reach twice as many as before. And the rats in "Utopia One" doubled in number in less than two months.
John calculated that it would take about a year and four months for the number of mice to reach the maximum number that the experimental device could bear: 3,840. However, by the time the experiment reached about three hundred days, the growth of the number of mice began to slow down.
At this point, the time required to double the number was extended to a hundred days. Compared with the previous only two months, the mice seem to have no desire to reproduce. John further found that by day 315 of the experiment, the number of mice in the "utopia" peaked at 2,200, but the mice's social behavior also began to be different.
Females abandon newborn young, and some even harm their own pups. There are frequent conflicts between rats in different territories, and casualties will also occur between territories due to the struggle for leadership.
After about 400 days of the experiment, the number of mice began to decrease. The number of newborn young rats has plummeted, and the number of "old mice" has continued to increase. Utopia One has entered the aging stage.
The number of matings between young females and males decreased, and some males even developed passive avoidance behaviors. In addition to eating, they comb their hair every day. Some male mice have shinier hair than female hair.
John named these male rats "pretty rats," and he found that the number of "pretty rats" had increased. In the end, there is no mating behavior between female and male mice. It wasn't until the hundredth day that the last rat died in its den. John regretfully announces that the "mouse utopia" experiment failed.
John concluded in a later experimental paper that by the time rat populations peaked, rat society had begun to collapse. Although the food and water in the "utopia" are endless, the limited space has determined the fate of the rat colony to perish.
In "Utopia", male rats, who have just reached adulthood, realize that there is no new territory to explore, and that the old territory is also occupied by the older male rats in the rat colony, and they begin to be confused.
Some males choose to challenge authority and change dynasties. Another part of the male rats, who do not like to fight, climb to a high place where the rat population lives in a small number and become "pretty rats". In the process, the female mouse slowly began to take on the responsibility of guarding the territory, and became very aggressive.
The sex differences between female and male rats have also gradually decreased, and the proportion of homosexuals in the rat population is also high. Finally, the desire to reproduce in the entire rat population declines, and the proportion of the population is unbalanced. The rat colony finally went extinct.
The "mouse utopia" experiment has always been regarded as a metaphor for the development of human destiny now, and the problems that human society now generates can be found in similar situations in experiments.
As for whether human society will go to extinction like the experimental "utopia", or to a truly beautiful utopia, it is unknown.
