The mice in UU-25 multiplied exponentially
during the first phase. In the second phase,
they developed two problems that curiously
affect our overcrowded species:
autism and homosexuality.
The last phase is characterized by a sudden
drop in fertility and ends in the extinction of
the colony. Calhoun interpreted the results
as an analogy for the fate of humans.

    Causes

    Calhoun was a psychologist. Therefore he, his colleagues and his detractors considered a single factor in
    their analysis of the results: overcrowding. He concluded that after a certain population density is attained,
    the constant encounter with anonymous cousins seems to induce the mice to lose their individuality. They
    can't cope with the rat race so to speak. The new generations also realize that all the social niches are
    filled. The mice stop reproducing and having normal sex lives. Overcrowding and overpopulation are known
    in biological circles as density dependent birth rates (DDBR).

    There is, however, a genetic component to the phenomenon: the Founder Effect. All the mice in his
    experiment descended from the original four couples. In fact, mice can start reproducing after they are
    two months old. Pregnancy lasts only 20 days and they can reproduce all year around. Since mice live a
    little over two years, the peak population of 2,200 individuals that the UU25 experiment attained very likely
    included the original founders of the dynasty. There was incest galore! Inbreeding cannot be brushed aside
    in this experiment.

    Let's now add another genetic factor. When did Mother Nature create the mouse? Was it at the beginning
    of the 20th Century?

    The record seems to show that mice diverged from rats perhaps between 8 and 14 million years ago. This
    means that mice have been around for a few million years. They had all this time to radiate and get used
    to certain diseases that certainly were fatal to them millions of years ago. It is this extremely slow sifting
    process known as genetic drift, passing through countless demographic bottlenecks, that results in the
    standardized mice we use in our experiments today.

    Let's add to this that laboratory mice are bred specifically for the purposes of investigation. What effects
    this special treatment has on genetic variation we are only beginning to study and understand. The point is
    that, for all we know, Calhoun may have started off with mice that were already brothers and sisters from
    a genetic perspective. Assuming this is his starting material, it wouldn't take but a handful of generations to
    produce deleterious genetic disorders such as autism and homosexuality. It is to note that researchers
    seldom if ever factor in their reports whether drosophila or norvegicus (which they use often in their lab
    experiments) are new species. How long have the fruit fly and the lab rat been around? How many
    population bottlenecks have they experienced throughout their history?

    We also have to look at what happens when density starts having an effect on social hierarchy. When the
    mice are first placed into the enclosure, ideally they are all equal. Each male has a female and each couple
    makes a nest. There's room for everybody. Food is plentiful. Life is good. It's Adam and Eve in the Garden.
    At some point the population swells and there is a struggle for space. The dominant and subordinate mice
    come into being. We have the rich and the poor, the masters and the slaves, the aggressive and the passive
    and, perhaps... the sadists and the masochists. When humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, there was
    no competition for game or for land because space was an unlimited resource. Land starts becoming a
    scarce resource when we enter the phase known as civilization, when we discover farming and
    domesticating, when we nucleate in villages and maneuver for productive parcels. It is competition that
    triggers the dominant and subordinate members of a species to appear. The more intense the competition,
    the more the weaker members are alienated... and become known as Mgtows...

    Therefore, it is tempting to conclude that autism and homosexuality develop in certain animals toward
    the end of a species' life and that these behaviors become more accentuated towards the very end once
    the population increases exponentially. A stunning statistic is that we find more genetic diversity among
    chimpanzees living in a given region than within the entire human race! There is less than 0.1% difference
    in the genetic information contained in the DNA molecule between any two humans. From a genetic
    perspective, contemporary humans are in effect marrying brothers and sisters no differently, we may add,
    than Calhoun's mice! This fact is more intriguing when we discover that the Neanderthals also ended up with
    little genetic diversity toward the end of their reign.

Utopian Universe 25

    The Utopian Universe

    For over 30 years, psychologist John Calhoun carried out several experiments with rats and with mice.
    Calhoun was interested in studying the effects of spatial constraints on the behaviors of rodents. In his
    classical test -- known as Utopian Universe 25 -- Calhoun placed four pairs of healthy mice in a 9 ft²
    enclosure and watched them multiply. The animals had access to unlimited quantities of food, water, and
    nesting material and were free of diseases and predators. The only limitation was space. After 300 days
    the population had topped 600 mice and Calhoun observed that some individuals began to act in strange
    ways. The population continued to grow until there were over 2200 mice, most of them exhibiting obvious
    mental disorders, specifically of a homosexual nature. Shortly after, the entire colony died. All of Calhoun's
    experiments with mice and with rats ended up pretty much in the same way.
Of Mice and Men

    What was astonishing about Calhoun's experiments is not only that the mice went through an exponential
    demographic growth phase that ended up in extinction. What was shocking is that after attaining certain
    densities the mice developed autism, homosexuality, and asexuality. Calhoun was among the first
    researchers to create these behaviors in the lab. Interestingly, these are the type of mental disorders that
    afflict ever more humans these days.

    As expected, psychiatrists and psychologists and affiliated individuals moved quickly to suppress his findings.
    Specifically, they accused Calhoun of being too eager to equate humans with animals, the most common
    accusation. So much were the shrinks offended by Calhoun's conclusions that practically all that survives of
    his work is a children's story -- The Secret of NIMH -- that alludes to the organization that funded his research.
    The cartoon makes a travesty of his research, a modern day Frankenstein tale where an experiment gets
    out of hand. The establishment watered down the implications of Calhoun's experiments and decided not to
    popularize them. As a result very few people, especially among those debating the issue of homosexuality,
    have heard about Calhoun or his findings. We should be reading about his mouse experiments every day.
    There should be a global debate on his findings because they have a bearing on the future of humanity.
John Calhoun in his Mouse Utopian Universe 25

"Was it this crowded
when you founded the
colony,
great-grandpa?"

The Beautiful Ones

Homosexuality has no future!

Homosexuality is just a sign that we are
the last humans on Earth!

    We aren't rats

    The main objection detractors lodge against Calhoun's results is that humans are not animals. Yes! Most
    people in the world live with this amusing notion that humans do not belong to the Wild Kingdom. There are
    rocks and minerals, plants and animals, and humans. These people therefore conclude that whatever
    happened to the mice in no way reflects upon our species. We have intelligence. We have Technology. And
    we have much greater tolerance for density, overpopulation, and crowdedness.

    What all these bright people fail to explain is why humans are having the same symptoms as Calhoun's mice.
    We have more homosexuals, asexuals, transsexuals, autists and people with other mental disorders coming
    out of the wombs every day. They fail to answer in what way mice and men are different with respect to
    density dependent birth rates and the washing of genes. They further fail to pinpoint in what way intelligence
    and technology can overcome density and aging constraints. Why wouldn't the mice begin to reproduce again
    once the population drops back to 8 or 15 couples? Why don't the last 20 or 30 mice jump-start the colony
    again? The ball is in their court.

    Calhoun's experiments in fact are more than a perfect analogy for what is happening to humanity. We are
    the last hominids. There is no other hominid after us, nothing we can or will evolve into. We are not going to
    become pygmies through an insular dwarfism process. And we are not going to change genetically in a
    radical way as to produce some kind of new species. We are it: the last of a long dynasty that started with
    tree dwellers in the early Cenozoic and before that with some kind of rodent like animal in the Jurassic or
    thereabouts. The status quo is that after millions of years the entire family tree of mammals, including its thin
    branch of hominids, has washed its genes. It is the same process that the Amish have undergone in the
    last 400 years, but slower and with many more individuals involved. There is ever scarcer genetic diversity
    among each of the species of mammals and very little left of it among humans. We are 7 billion individuals
    stranded on a rock swirling through space. If the mice were Calhoun's test subjects, humans are the mice in
    Mother Nature's experiment. We have nowhere to go and are now interbreeding to exhaustion. And of course,
    under these circumstances, we are starting to see what Calhoun observed in his lab: the appearance of ever
    more autists and homosexuals. We are starting to see the weirdest diseases imaginable, nothing like we've
    ever seen in history. These congenital diseases are the result of inbreeding among members of a species
    that has lost its genetic diversity. A couple of them help place the predicament that humans face in the right
    perspective:







    Anyone who dismisses these cases as 'outliers' and just 'interesting' has missed the lesson of genetic
    cleansing. What you are witnessing is Mother Nature's final straw, her way of ensuring that our species
    does not rule forever. She only allows a species to be king for a day.

Several Studies have confirmed
that chimpanzees have more genetic
diversity than humans. One study
concluded that a single group of 55
chimps from West Africa has twice
the genetic diversity than the entire
human race. The official view is that
sometime in the distant past near
the time humans branched off from
chimps our population suffered a
serious collapse, perhaps as a
result of disease or catastrophic
accident. But what if there is
another mechanism at work?

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