Have you ever heard of the great experiment orchestrated by psychologist John B. Calhoun? Nothing less than a Rats Utopia or as it was known Universe 25 which was about testing social overcrowding while providing everyone with the same convenience: water, food and "houses" for their rat tenants.

How it all started

The project was started in 1954 with few rats scattered throughout this small universe, with the passage of time the rats began to develop their community creating nests, roles in "society" and the formation of groups, totally similar to ours. In human history, over time a small town began to form after what the psychologist calls the Exploration Time where rats began to reproduce constantly but it was still not a problem with the high amount of food and water available together with the shelters that "yet" wasn't a problem.

Population growth

Mating became more and more recent and the rat population multiplied every week, but even with the high amount of supplies at their disposal, some rats started to be considered "Alphas" as they began to demonstrate authoritarian behavior such as aggression against rats. minors, abusing the females and on some occasions other males, not being enough to create a new group of "Omegas" rats that was the part rejected for not being able to dispute some females for the dominants or even a space in society, these can also be known to have acquired a depressive behavior as they only fed and slept and always being the bottom of the hierarchy becoming lonely and without a reason to continue their lineage.

We've reached Hell

According to John B. after almost a year, utopia had turned into a little hell, again the "Alpha" males became less and less peaceful with other rodents, which ended up affecting the females as well, making them quite aggressive due to what happened being seen. on occasions when they killed their own young or abandoned them in their nests, thus causing Cannibalism on the part of some rats, as some rats with little space in the hierarchy began to have difficulty accessing food dominated by other groups, mortality until now it was 90% and with that began the fall of society

Killing a society

After all this event, the rats that were born in this hell that became lived just to live, since they did not have an ethic of how they should behave in the hierarchy, without a maternity or reproduction incentive, they started to just eat, drink and sleep.
This was the final point to start what the psychologist called "The death of Universe 25 - The end of a wish with no future" after the death of these young people without caring about the future of society, the rat utopia came to an end with no survivors.

With all this experiment John wanted to convey to us that we exist only to have a goal, if mice instead of receiving all the support of getting food, water or housing and didn't have to live with the same routine every day of feeding, reproducing and go back to their little houses, perhaps this society would not have reached this horrible point of "extinction" that it finds itself. Perhaps every species that doesn't have a purpose in life ends up in self-destruction, but some researchers contradict the research by claiming that this moral decay can come to be created through excessive social interaction.