The Calhoun Effect — Transcript

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1. 0:00Eight mice were placed inside a perfect
2. 0:02world. Four males, four females. They
3. 0:04had unlimited food and unlimited water.
4. 0:06There were no diseases or predators,
5. 0:08absolutely no threats of any kind. Five
6. 0:10years later, every single one of them
7. 0:12was dead, and not a single death was
8. 0:14caused by anything a vet could have
9. 0:16diagnosed. This is Universe 25, the most
10. 0:19disturbing experiment ever run on a
11. 0:21society. In 1968, an American scientist
12. 0:23named John Calhoun built something he
13. 0:25called a paradise for mice. Soft nesting
14. 0:28material in every corner, the
15. 0:30temperature held perfectly stable, the
16. 0:32cages cleaned by hand on a schedule.
17. 0:34They were the healthiest specimens from
18. 0:36the breeding colony of the National
19. 0:37Institutes of Health. Calhoun was an
20. 0:39ethologist. He had spent his entire
21. 0:41career obsessed with one specific
22. 0:42question. What happens to a society when
23. 0:45nothing is hard anymore? He had been
24. 0:46chasing the answer for two decades by
25. 0:48the time he reached this experiment. He
26. 0:50had built earlier versions in a
27. 0:52quarter-acre forest in Maryland, in barn
28. 0:54enclosures, and in laboratory rooms, 24
29. 0:56of them, one after another. Each one a
30. 0:58slightly different paradise for rats or
31. 1:00mice with no scarcity, no predators, and
32. 1:03no escape. In every single one of them,
33. 1:05he had seen the same pattern. The
34. 1:07population would explode, violence would
35. 1:09spike, mating would distort into
36. 1:11something twisted and hyperactive, then
37. 1:13collapse into apathy, and the colony
38. 1:15would die. He had documented the pattern
39. 1:1724 times. The 25th was meant to be the
40. 1:20perfect one, the clean experiment, the
41. 1:22final answer that nobody could argue
42. 1:24with. He set it up inside a federal
43. 1:26research lab in Maryland, a 9-ft square
44. 1:28enclosure with apartments stacked along
45. 1:30every wall, reached by mesh tunnels
46. 1:32running floor to ceiling. Calhoun called
47. 1:34them walk-up apartments. Each one was
48. 1:37fed by hoppers that never ran empty and
49. 1:39water bottles that never ran dry. He
50. 1:41calculated the space could comfortably
51. 1:42support around 3,800
52. 1:45mice. It would never come close to that
53. 1:47number. On day one, he placed his eight
54. 1:49founders inside and shut the lid. For
55. 1:51the first 104 days, almost nothing
56. 1:53happened. The mice explored, learned the
57. 1:55geography, and worked out who slept
58. 1:57where. Then the first litters were born
59. 1:59and the population began to double every
60. 2:0155 days twice as many mice as before. By
61. 2:04day 315, more than 600 animals were
62. 2:07living inside. They climbed over each
63. 2:09other on the ramps, slept in piles, and
64. 2:11jostled for nesting space at the tops of
65. 2:13the apartments. This is the moment
66. 2:15everything began to come apart. In a
67. 2:17normal mouse colony, when the population
68. 2:19grows past what the territory can
69. 2:20absorb, the surplus mice leave. They
70. 2:23emigrate. They find new ground somewhere
71. 2:25else. Inside Universe 25, there was no
72. 2:28new ground. The young males with nowhere
73. 2:30to go and no role to fill began drifting
74. 2:33into the center of the enclosure. They
75. 2:34formed listless pools of bodies. Calhoun
76. 2:37would stand above the pen for hours
77. 2:39watching them do nothing. They had no
78. 2:41fights to win, no females to court,
79. 2:43nothing to defend. They were healthy,
80. 2:45well-fed, and they had absolutely
81. 2:47nothing to do. When one of them was
82. 2:49attacked by another mouse, he would not
83. 2:51fight back. He would lie there and
84. 2:53absorb the damage, then stand up, walk a
85. 2:55few feet, and lie down again. But not
86. 2:57every male went quiet. A second group
87. 2:59formed at the same time on the opposite
88. 3:01end of the spectrum. They were frantic
89. 3:03and indiscriminate. They moved through
90. 3:05the enclosure faster than any other
91. 3:06mice. They forced themselves into nests
92. 3:09other males were trying to defend. They
93. 3:11skipped the courtship rituals every
94. 3:13other mouse still followed. They refused
95. 3:15to be deterred even by violence from
96. 3:17dominant males. And in the worst pockets
97. 3:19of the colony, behaviors began to appear
98. 3:21that no functioning mouse society had
99. 3:24ever produced. responded with their own
100. 3:26retreat. The ones who could not find a
101. 3:28place in the social order climbed to the
102. 3:30highest apartments and lived alone. They
103. 3:32stopped interacting with males. They
104. 3:34stopped reproducing. Calhoun also
105. 3:36noticed something he called the
106. 3:37behavioral sink. Even when food was
107. 3:40equally available everywhere, the mice
108. 3:42began crowding compulsively around a few
109. 3:44specific feeders. They would not eat
110. 3:46alone. The presence of other mice had
111. 3:47become so wired into their feeding
112. 3:49instinct that an empty feeder, no matter
113. 3:51how full, was useless to them. The
114. 3:53crowding got worse and worse around a
115. 3:55handful of stations while the rest of
116. 3:57the enclosure sat almost untouched. Then
117. 3:59the mothers who were still trying to
118. 4:00raise pups began to fail in a much
119. 4:02darker way. Defending a nest in that
120. 4:04environment took constant work. The
121. 4:06males who had originally claimed
122. 4:08territory grew exhausted from patrolling
123. 4:10and stopped protecting their families.
124. 4:11The mothers had to defend the nest
125. 4:13themselves while still nursing. They
126. 4:14turned on their own young. They
127. 4:16abandoned them in scattered places
128. 4:17around the enclosure. Some forgot which
129. 4:19pups belonged to them at all. Others
130. 4:21stopped recognizing them as theirs
131. 4:22entirely. And in the worst stretches,
132. 4:24mothers began eating their own
133. 4:26offspring. In some sections of the
134. 4:27colony, fewer than one in 20 newborn
135. 4:30mice survived to weaning. Calhoun would
136. 4:32write later that by this point the
137. 4:34social fabric of the colony was
138. 4:35effectively dead. The bodies were still
139. 4:37alive. The structure that held them
140. 4:39together as a species was not. The pups
141. 4:41that did survive were raised by mothers
142. 4:43who barely cared whether they lived.
143. 4:44They had no model of what a functioning
144. 4:47life inside this place looked like. And
145. 4:49when they grew up, they behaved like
146. 4:51nothing Calhoun had ever seen. The males
147. 4:53of this generation never fought. They
148. 4:55never tried to mate. They never engaged
149. 4:57in any social activity at all. They ate,
150. 4:59they slept, and they groomed themselves
151. 5:01obsessively. Their fur stayed perfect
152. 5:04because they never got into a single
153. 5:05fight. They moved through the colony as
154. 5:07if no other mouse existed in it. Calhoun
155. 5:09named them the beautiful ones. They
156. 5:11looked, externally, like the healthiest
157. 5:13mice in the entire colony. They were
158. 5:15also, functionally, dead. They never
159. 5:18tried to reproduce. They could not
160. 5:20socialize. Their nervous systems had
161. 5:22developed inside a world where every
162. 5:24social role was already filled by
163. 5:26someone else. And they had simply opted
164. 5:28out of the species. On day 560, the
165. 5:31population peaked at 2,200 mice. It
166. 5:34would never go higher. The last
167. 5:36successful conception inside Universe 25
168. 5:38happened on day 920. After that, no new
169. 5:41mice were born. The colony continued to
170. 5:44age. The beautiful ones kept grooming
171. 5:45themselves. The secluded females stayed
172. 5:48in their high apartments. Violence
173. 5:50carried on in pockets with no purpose
174. 5:52left to it. And one by one the mice died
175. 5:54of old age with no replacements coming
176. 5:56up behind them. On May 23rd, 1973, the
177. 6:00last mouse in Universe 25 died 4 years
178. 6:03and 10 months after Calhoun shut the
179. 6:05lid. He wrote that the mice had died two
180. 6:07deaths. The first was the death of the
181. 6:09spirit. The second was the death of the
182. 6:11body. The first one happened years
183. 6:12before the second. When his paper came
184. 6:14out, the world ran with the obvious
185. 6:16reading. Comfort kills. Abundance kills.
186. 6:19A life with no struggle is a life that
187. 6:21destroys itself. The image of the
188. 6:23beautiful ones, perfect looking and
189. 6:25quietly extinct, became one of the most
190. 6:27cited metaphors of the late 20th
191. 6:29century. Urbanists pointed to it.
192. 6:31Religious leaders. Politicians on every
193. 6:33side of every issue. Anyone who wanted
194. 6:36to warn about the decay of modern life
195. 6:38found something in those mice they could
196. 6:39use. But that reading was not what
197. 6:41Calhoun actually said. His real
198. 6:43conclusion was sitting there in the
199. 6:44paper, in his own words. For an animal
200. 6:46as complex as a human being, he wrote,
201. 6:49"a similar collapse was not just
202. 6:51possible, it was logical. If the number
203. 6:53of individuals capable of filling
204. 6:55meaningful roles greatly exceeds the
205. 6:57number of roles available, only violence
206. 6:59and disruption can follow." The killer
207. 7:01wasn't comfort, it was the disappearance
208. 7:04of meaningful roles. When the population
209. 7:06grew faster than the supply of
210. 7:07meaningful roles the colony could offer,
211. 7:09the mice with no place stopped
212. 7:11functioning. The fighters had no one to
213. 7:13fight. The mothers
214. 7:15nests that no one helped them keep. The
215. 7:17young grew up with nothing they were
216. 7:19expected to inherit. The structure that
217. 7:21gave each individual mouse a reason to
218. 7:23participate in the species evaporated.
219. 7:25The food never ran out. The water never
220. 7:27ran out. What ran out was something
221. 7:29nobody had thought to put in the
222. 7:31paradise to begin with. Comfort didn't
223. 7:33kill them. It just removed the friction
224. 7:35that made being alive feel like
225. 7:36something. And here is the part almost
226. 7:38nobody quotes. Calhoun himself was not a
227. 7:41doomer. He spent the rest of his career
228. 7:43not predicting the collapse, but trying
229. 7:45to prevent it. He kept building new
230. 7:46universes. He kept changing the
231. 7:48variables. He was looking for the single
232. 7:50thing he could put back into a paradise
233. 7:52that would let it keep working. He
234. 7:53believed it could be done. [music] He
235. 7:55believed humans could choose differently
236. 7:57than the mice did. He wrote that as
237. 7:59physical space contracts, the only way
238. 8:01forward is to extend ourselves into
239. 8:03conceptual space, into ideas, into
240. 8:05networks, into the work of building
241. 8:07roles that did not exist before. He
242. 8:09called it ideational generativity, a
243. 8:11long phrase for a simple idea. The way
244. 8:13out is to keep making new reasons to be
245. 8:16here. But the experiment is still
246. 8:17sitting there in the data, a perfectly
247. 8:19designed paradise, eight mice, five
248. 8:22years, a complete extinction, and a
249. 8:23cause of death no toxicology report
250. 8:26would ever be able to name. The mice
251. 8:28didn't have a choice. We still do. What
252. 8:30happens next is on us.