https://expose-news.com/2022/09/20/societal-collapse-brings-about-extinction/

William Vogt, Paul Ehrlich, and the others were neo-Malthusians, arguing that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But John Calhoun’s “Universe 25” experiments on rats and mice showed that overcrowding on its own could destroy a society before famine even got a chance.

Ecologists such as 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.

But while everyone was worried about a lack of resources, one behavioural researcher sought to answer a different question: what happens to society if all our appetites are catered for, and all our needs are met?

John Calhoun was an ethologist and animal behaviourist who had a long-standing interest in how rodents interact and create societies. In 1972, he detailed the specifications of his ‘Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice’, a practical utopia built in the laboratory called Universe 25. In these early crowding experiments, rats were supplied with everything they needed – except space. The result was a population boom, followed by such severe psychological disruption that the animals died off to extinction.

The take-home message was that crowding resulted in pathological behaviour – in rats and by extension in humans. This “behavioural sink” – the collapse in behaviour – was observed by Calhoun in a series of experiments on overcrowding he conducted.

Norway Rat Experiments In March 1947, Calhoun began a study of a colony of Norway rats as part of the Rodent Ecology Project at Johns Hopkins University. This study was funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. It ended in 1951 when he moved to Maryland and began working for the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre. In 1954 he began working for the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) where he remained for the next 33 years.

The US Army Signal Corps in cooperation with the US Public Health Service filmed Calhoun’s early experiments on Norway rats during the years 1947 to 1949. From these, in 1955 the US Army produced the short film below. https://rumble.com/vmk1bu-37886394.html