Mmm. As a college freshman, I had to read "The Rat Trap". Sheesh. What a depressing story... A colleague asked the other day if our culture was experiencing more disorder than in the past. I wonder if mankind is not experiencing the rat effect.
John B. Calhoun was the American ecologist and psychologist who observed behavioral changes with increased population density. His study of population pressure began with the Rodent Ecology Project of Johns Hopkins University in 1947. Wiki tells he was intrigued that the population of 10,000 square foot outdoor pen never had more than 200 rats, and stabilized at 150 rats. He discovered that rats cannot live harmoniously in a group larger than 12, at which time psychological effects begin to tear the group apart. (He noted the same was true for humans.)
The New York Times tells that one of his discoveries was universal autism. This is when the members of a last generation of rodents in an increasingly crowded environment will not procreate. Their social skills and interaction become so deteriorated that they stay alone and just groom themselves. These are rats who lack for nothing, but because of their crowded conditions, they simply 'check out'.
Escaping the Laboratory is an interesting review of Calhoun's life and studies. Before the great 'check out' described above, their behaviors become more bizarre as the population increases, despite having sufficient food and water. Aggressive packs develop, mothers abandon their babies, and (gulp) they even turn to cannibalism. Further, the social changes are permanent.
With such data, Calhoun began to assert there was an upper bound for the number of individuals before population pressure began to destroy a culture. It might seem that Calhoun would have become very pessimistic about mankind's future. However, the authors (Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams) explain he viewed his experiments as a science lesson and guidance for how we should construct the cities of the future.
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