The nursing females become aggressive, essentially taking over the role of the territorial males.

The male ability to defend territory declines.

Population doubling time is about 145 days.

Phase C – stagnation – a period of equilibrium (315-559 days)

At the end of this phase there were 3 times as many socially immature mice as there were socially established older ones.

As the population increased, most mice associated eating and drinking with the presence of others.

Although each living unit was identical in structure and opportunities, more food and water was consumed in certain areas.

The births tended to be concentrated in some sets of nest boxes (dominant males), while others (non-dominant males – withdrawn males = WM) had few or none.

Social organization established – frequency of litters proportional to social dominance.

Population doubling time is about 55 days.

Phase B – Rapid population growth – a period of exploitation of resources (105-314 days) On day 104 began to be born the first “new” mouse.After a relative stabilization of the situation mice have created a sort of territorial division and started to build a nest.Initially, the mice had trouble adjusting to the environment and to each other.On the first day to the habitat were allowed in 4 males and 4 females.The only limitation – a space that could accommodate up to 3840 mice. Maximum limited spread of infectious diseases (health care for the mouse).Ĥ. Unlimited access to food, water and materials needed to build a shelter.ģ. Despite repeated attempts the end result was always the same – unlimited access to food and lack of threats caused the extinction of the population.ġ. The experiment was carried out on mice in 1968 and lasted four years. John Calhoun created the mouse equivalent of human civilization development. The exact question that this experiment is trying to answer is “what happens when individuals of a given species can provide everything you need to survive?”. Many of the problems above questions provide us may “experiment Calhoun”, originally called “Mouse Utopia”. What are the objectives of mankind? What instincts rule us? Do you strive for some higher purpose, is just about to spawn and fight for survival? They approached the problem from both the purely scientific, religious or philosophical.

The question of the future of humanity is not new.

Mouse utopia experiment criticism