John Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment shows how we are heading toward the end of civilization

Several movies have been made to imitate the possible future of humans when there would be no resources. And recently scientists and environmentalists are working to take advantage of nonrenewable resources. This article will take you through John Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment. Universe 25 was an artificial environment in which white mice were given all the required resources that they needed to thrive. The environment was made to fit 3,000 mice. But they could never reach up to 2,000.

What Happened during the Universe 25 experiment?

During this experiment, he found that initially, mice took days to acclimatize, and slowly but surely the reproduction rate increased exponentially. With immense resources available to thrive they were reproducing in large numbers.

The doubling period of the mice population became just 50 days. As the population increased, day by day mothers started losing the maternal Instinct to take care of their progeny. He observed that the feeding ground turned out to be a close interaction point for mice where groups began to form. Some of the mice who could not manage to be part of this group were deprived of any resources. The close contact at the feeding site leads to a deadly fight between mice despite having enough resources.

The next generation was more interesting than ever before. This generation is called the beautiful ones. This generation grew up in a hostile environment where organisms would fight for resources. The progeny of this generation shows no interest in social interaction and community-making. They would keep themselves in a limited space and would consume all the resources in that space only. Most of the time they would go and groom themselves, that’s why they are called the beautiful ones.

Conclusion

We can relate to the beautiful ones as humans nowadays are not interested in social interaction but in grooming and beautifying themselves. This is how eventually they lose control of civilization and die. This reflects that even if we won’t have any deprivation of resources we can easily head towards the end.

The shocking 1972 UNIVERSE-25 MOUSE UTOPIA experiment few have ever heard about.

A message from the past on how societies form around abundance. pic.twitter.com/BhV6Odz2Sh

— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) December 27, 2022