They started acting weirdly, rolling dirt into balls rather than digging normal tunnels. At that point, the rats became too stressed to reproduce. He expected to be able to house 5,000 rats there, but over the two years he observed the city, the population never exceeded 150. In 1947, to keep a close eye on his charges, Calhoun constructed a quarter-acre “rat city” behind his house, and filled it with breeding pairs. The only adversity: space limitation – the size of the habitat was predicted to host 3840 mice.Limited opportunities for transmissible disease.No shortage of food, water and nesting material.Rat utopia living arrangements within Universe 25. These adventures eventually led him to a doctorate in biology, and then a job in Baltimore, where he was tasked with studying the habits of Norway rats, one of the city’s chief pests.
Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence,” Calhoun spent his childhood traipsing around Tennessee, chasing toads, collecting turtles, and banding birds. The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun.Īs Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams detail in a paper, “ Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. They couldn’t have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead. They must have thought they were the luckiest mice in the world. The residents of “Universe 25” were mostly left alone, save for one man who would peer at them from above, and his team of similarly interested assistants. Which, of course, is constantly interrupted by white-coated humans with scalpels or syringes. It was even better than your average lab mouse’s life. There were no predators, no cats, no traps, no long winters. Of course, this is a far cry from a wild mouse’s life. They were given the run of the place, which had everything they might need: food, water, climate control, hundreds of nesting boxes to choose from, and a lush floor of shredded paper and ground corn cob. The mice themselves were bright and healthy, hand-picked from the institute’s breeding stock. It was about the size of a small storage unit. Maybe “box” isn’t the right word for it the space was more like a room, known as “Universe 25”, and it was large. On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. What would be more appropriate than to discuss RAT lifestyle in urban centers? Well, it's gonna be the year of the rat in a few days.
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