My Featured Blogger this week is Muurian of UptownNerd, a Nigerian Legal Practitioner and novelist with an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Muurian writes on a wide range of topics, here a notorious lab experiment with frightening implications about human society. Read on.
The Universe 25 Experiment is a scientific experiment performed by American top scientist, John Calhoun. In the experiment, the scientist used an artificially created mice colony to perform an experiment to help further understand the dynamics of the human society.
John Calhoun built a colony of micefor the experiment and brought in hundreds of mice to fill it in. The colony itself was built as a paradise, containing surplus food and water with all good housing conditions that you will expect in a typical paradise. He called it “Paradise of Mice”. The plan was to watch the hundreds of mice live in this ideal world of surplusage, multiply and seemingly enjoy themselves forever.
HOW BIG WAS UNIVERSE 25 IN CALHOUN’S EXPERIMENT?
The Universe 25 was the biggest of John Calhoun’s compartmentalized rat utopia experiments. Although he started the scientific inquiry in a rural place, he later got his own lab…
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Mitch Teemley 
I just read the article. It sure feels like we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Ugh.
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Wow this was an amazing read 🌸
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It’s astounding that he had the same results 25 times. An unusual and interesting article.
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Additional info from The Smithsonian (there’s also a link to video from the experiment but I didn’t watch it):
But we can take comfort in the face that humans are not mice. The NIH Record spoke to medical historian Edmund Ramsden about Calhoun’s work:
Ultimately, “[r]ats may suffer from crowding; human beings can cope,” Ramdsen says. “Calhoun’s research was seen not only as questionable, but also as dangerous.” Another researcher, Jonathan Freedman, turned to studying actual people — they were just high school and university students, but definitely human. His work suggested a different interpretation. Moral decay could arise “not from density, but from excessive social interaction,” Ramsden says. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.”
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Also, per The Smithsonian article, the study was the basis for the NIMH book and movie.
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Ah, ‘The Rats of NIMH.’ Saw the animated movie, but never read the book (or its sequels).
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I’ve never seen nor read it. I knew of the movie but not the plot… I thought it was a happy happy kids film.
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Family movie, yes, but not a kid’s movie per se. The darker stuff–their being experimented on (and gaining super-intelligence)–isn’t too graphically depicted.
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Hello Muurian. Kudos to you for choosing a blog topic that’s guaranteed to generate reader interest / get a conversation going.
John Calhoun’s study certainly raises a few key questions. And I’ll probably think of plenty more after I post this comment, too. But, for starters…
If an “abundance of everything isn’t going to make anyone satisfied with it”, even lead to extinction, is that supposed to somehow justify every sadistic sovereign who, from time immemorial, has done his damnedest to ensure his subjects live in squalor?
And, how are the subjugated masses supposed to react? Pin a medal on their oppressor’s chest for “saving” humanity?
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I have read about Universe 25 before. It is now playing out in society, and didn’t take 25 generations.
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I loved this story. A friend and I were talking about the human condition being so much like that this morning so it was amazing when I read the story of the mice. Fascinating!
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A fascinating experiment with terrifying results. Thanks for sharing.
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Interesting and terrifying at the same time.. much love to you Mitch, Fiona 😊
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Thank you, Fiona!
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Jeez. They’re talking about the ugly in us. Terrifying. Thanks for posting. xo
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Thanks for posting! I commented on his site: “”He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.” – Ecclesiastes 5:10 There is never “enough” when the problem is a heart set on greed and/or envy. Yes, truly frightening, but only if this world is all there is.”
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Exactly.
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Thanks for the share. It was an absorbing, disturbing read.
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I’ve always wondered whether the use of mice or rate for experiments provides a valid setting to predict human behavior.
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