Gerontologist Sarah Harper looks at the connections between these changes and what's happening on a large scale with the planet's population. And their choices about whether to get married and have kids are often very different from those of earlier generations. They work at jobs that didn't exist in the 1960s. VEDANTAM: In the decades since John Calhoun created his mouse utopia, the world has changed dramatically. And we find a twist in the doomsday story far stranger than anything John Calhoun imagined. VEDANTAM: This week on HIDDEN BRAIN, we revisit that dire prediction made half a century ago. With too many people competing for partners, shelter and social standing, we would eventually destroy ourselves just like those mice. It was every city, suburb and village projected into the future all around the world. And then he reached a controversial conclusion. VEDANTAM: John Calhoun watched closely as his rodent heaven became a rodent hell. Eventually, the entire population was dead.
After a while, the mice stopped reproducing. VEDANTAM: At one point, nearly every mouse in the enclosure had a raw, injured tail from being bitten by other mice. With so many males withdrawn and distracted, nursing females had no one to defend their nests, and they became aggressive. Eventually, a horde of lower status male mice turned into outcasts, spending all day huddled in the center of the room vacant and listless. There were few places to nest and not enough room at the top of the mouse social hierarchy. There were too many young mice and too little space. The details of what happened are disturbing. VEDANTAM: Soon, it didn't feel like a utopia anymore. And on, and on, and on - ballooning from dozens of mice to hundreds of mice to thousands of mice, all crowded together in a 9-foot-by-9-foot metal room, twitching, scampering, screeching. And those babies grew up and had their own babies. VEDANTAM: Then those babies grew up and had their own babies. What would happen as the population of mice grew larger and the dimensions of the room felt smaller? Would a change in numbers set off a change in behavior? Soon, the mice began to have babies. And reproducing was key because the scientist, John Calhoun, had a question. All there was to do was eat, play and reproduce. There were no diseases to get sick from, no cats to fear, no rain, no snow, no wind. There were tunnels to play in and strips of paper to nest in. VEDANTAM: Universe 25 was a mouse utopia. And if you got close enough, you could hear its eight tiny inhabitants.
In the summer of 1968, a scientist created a small metal room at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland.
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