In Calhoun's experiments, rodent populations were kept in artificial, small environments with otherwise ideal conditions and unlimited food supply. īehavioral sinks in Calhoun's experiments are thought to have been caused by evolutionary mismatches caused by overpopulation or the relaxation of natural selection in these 'utopian' conditions inevitably leading to the build-up of deleterious mutations among the mice that ultimately had the effect of reducing both group and individual fitness (see social epistasis amplification model).ĭescription of the experiments He claimed the ensuing physiological strain this harsh competition for limited social roles put on the mice subjected to these conditions resulted in the emergence of "autistic-like creatures, capable only of the most simple behaviours compatible with physiological survival", eventually leading to the "breakdown of all normal social behavior", with this often resulting in the auto-extinction of the rodent colonies in question. Ĭalhoun conducted a series of experiments with mice and rats which are called mice/rats utopia or paradise, some of which resulted in such population collapses.Ĭalhoun's explanation for the outcome of his experiments was that overpopulation leads to social hierarchies where there was more demand for social roles than could be reasonably filled. Calhoun, referring to an abrupt population collapse in extremely mild environments. The behavioral sink is a term coined by American behavioral researcher John B. Calhoun in one of his experimental colonies Leftism and PC likes to pretend that natural selection and evolution don’t apply to humans anymore, because the implications upset their political fantasies. We’ll simply become more like the Fierce People as our IQ declines and our lack of empathy - our autism - increases. Insomuch we have no John Calhoun to maintain our utopia, we won’t die out. Among the Yanomamö of Venezuela - one of the most violent tribes in the world, called “The Fierce People” by other tribes - the rate of left-handedness is an astonishing 22.6% … So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that in warm, unpredictable environments - where basic needs are met - left-handedness is much higher, because there is less selection against the correlates of left-handedness like autism, psychopathology and low IQ. In our harsh, predictable ecology, Europeans have been selected to cooperate and create strongly bounded social bonds, because groups with these characteristics are more likely to survive. Obviously, the parallels to the modern world are striking: Effeminate men, masculine women, the breakdown of the traditional order. As a result, there came a point where no more mice were born, and the colony gradually died out. Eventually, the majority of mice were mutants of these kinds, meaning that the “normal” mice weren’t socialised properly and so never learnt “normal” behaviour among these relatively complex social animals. The bizarre behaviour patterns the Calhoun team began to observe: highly aggressive females expelling their offspring from the nest before they’d learnt how to socialise, celibate masculinized females, and groups of effeminate males - known as “the beautiful ones” - who spent all their time grooming each other, with no interest in fighting for territory or in females. Then, just as has happened to us, growth started to slow down, in part because, according to Woodley’s team, more and more surviving mutants no longer had the inclination to breed. argues that in Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia - in the absence of predators, food shortage or adverse weather conditions - the population skyrocketed, just as happened after the Industrial Revolution. Are we in our own “Mouse Utopia” in which Darwinian selection has collapsed? … The results were horrifying: increasingly bizarre behaviour patterns, a collapse in reproduction, eventual extinction. In creating this “Mouse Utopia” the experiment replicated post-industrial conditions in the West, where child mortality has fallen from 40% to about 1% since 1800, due to dramatically improved medicine and living conditions. Its aim was to understand what would happen if Darwinian selection massively weakened. Led by the startlingly creative scientist John B. Between 19, a fascinating experiment took place at the University of Maryland.
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