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Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity
A bizarre and compelling biography of a scientist and his work, using rodent cities to question the potential catastrophes of human overpopulation.
It was the strangest of experiments. What began as a utopian environment, where mice had sumptuous accommodations, all the food and water they could want, and were free from disease and predators, turned into a mouse hell. Science writer and animal behaviorist Lee Alan Dugatkin introduces readers to the peculiar work of rodent researcher John Bumpass Calhoun. In this enthralling tale, Dugatkin shows how an ecologist-turned-psychologist-turned-futurist became a science rock star embedded in the culture of the 1960s and 1970s. As interest grew in his rodent cities, Calhoun was courted by city planners and reflected in everything from Tom Wolfe's hard-hitting novels to the children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. He was invited to meetings with the Royal Society and the Pope, and taken seriously when he proposed a worldwide cybernetic brain—a decade before others made the Internet a reality.
Readers see how Calhoun's experiments—rodent apartment complexes like "Mouse Universe 25"—led to his concept of "behavioral sinks" with real effects on public policy discussions. Overpopulation in Calhoun's mouse complexes led to the loss of sex drive, the absence of maternal care, and a class of automatons including "the beautiful ones," who spent their time grooming themselves while shunning socialization. Calhoun—and the others who followed his work—saw the collapse of this mouse population as a harbinger of the ill effects of an overpopulated human world.
Drawing on previously unpublished archival research and interviews with Calhoun's family and former colleagues, Dugatkin offers a riveting account of an intriguing scientific figure. Considering Dr. Calhoun's experiments, he explores the changing nature of scientific research and delves into what the study of animal behavior can teach us about ourselves.
It was the strangest of experiments. What began as a utopian environment, where mice had sumptuous accommodations, all the food and water they could want, and were free from disease and predators, turned into a mouse hell. Science writer and animal behaviorist Lee Alan Dugatkin introduces readers to the peculiar work of rodent researcher John Bumpass Calhoun. In this enthralling tale, Dugatkin shows how an ecologist-turned-psychologist-turned-futurist became a science rock star embedded in the culture of the 1960s and 1970s. As interest grew in his rodent cities, Calhoun was courted by city planners and reflected in everything from Tom Wolfe's hard-hitting novels to the children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. He was invited to meetings with the Royal Society and the Pope, and taken seriously when he proposed a worldwide cybernetic brain—a decade before others made the Internet a reality.
Readers see how Calhoun's experiments—rodent apartment complexes like "Mouse Universe 25"—led to his concept of "behavioral sinks" with real effects on public policy discussions. Overpopulation in Calhoun's mouse complexes led to the loss of sex drive, the absence of maternal care, and a class of automatons including "the beautiful ones," who spent their time grooming themselves while shunning socialization. Calhoun—and the others who followed his work—saw the collapse of this mouse population as a harbinger of the ill effects of an overpopulated human world.
Drawing on previously unpublished archival research and interviews with Calhoun's family and former colleagues, Dugatkin offers a riveting account of an intriguing scientific figure. Considering Dr. Calhoun's experiments, he explores the changing nature of scientific research and delves into what the study of animal behavior can teach us about ourselves.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published October 3, 2024
12 people are currently reading
157 people want to read
About the author
Lee Alan Dugatkin
23 books32 followersBorn in 1962, Lee Alan Dugatkin is a professor and distinguished university scholar in the department of biology at the University of Louisville. His main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 10, 2024
Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity was such an interesting book! As a scientist who works with mice, I heard about Dr. Calhoun studies during every stages of my education. What a model of perseverance! I loved learning about how he designed his experiments trough his career. I think Lee Alan Dugatkin did a great job reporting Dr. Calhoun life. Thank you NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for the book in exchange for an honest review.
October 19, 2025
This was a nice introductory into who John Calhoun was and what he did. Unfortunately, I wasn't looking for a biography of him. I was looking for a book that went into his experiment. Plus the writing was a little dry. It's not bad, just slow at times.
April 12, 2024
It’s like Margaret Sanger’s Willard.
This is a biography of John Calhoun. Calhoun was an ethologist (it means the study of animal behaviors, specifically as part of a group or between animals of the same species) in the early days of the codification of the field, and did his most famous work with rat and mouse populations, and specifically his experiment in what he called ‘rat utopia.’ He has been somewhat forgotten, maybe with good cause. Even I had him conflated with Bruce Alexander (who did rat park, not rat utopia).
The book is focused on his work. He did do his masters and doctoral work at Northwestern, provoking my Chicago fact-check for the book: there was not a Red or Purple line in 1938.* Admittedly, the author makes it seem like his life was his work and his home orderly and ordinary.
Calhoun’s work started with his noticing that rat populations for an area tended to be stable at a certain number, even if the area had the resources to support more rats. Even if the number was artificially increased or decreased, it would float to that number. So he created an experimentally perfect place for rats, that he would call rat utopia, where all their needs were met, but where the natural processes would stick population at that increased number in order to see what would happen.
From there, shit got weird.
Shit got weird in the experiment, as the rat populations start to exhibit unusual behaviors, made more aberrant still via Calhoun’s gift of a turn of phrase, like “behavior sink” or “universal autism.” I am consciously not going to try to describe the results of what happen for reasons that ought to come clear later, but when Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson write about your work, you know it produced read-worthy information.
But shit also got weird in Calhoun. The analogy is the family-friendly John C. Lilly. Calhoun reacted to the dystopias he created for rats by envisioning utopias for humans. He even wrote a sci-fi novel that sounds like it was wisely left unfinished. Calhoun was intense about the idea of a philosophy that would provide what humanity needed to continue to thrive. It does not seem like he had an answer for that philosophy, but he could describe the outline of it.
In the process, he allegedly predicted the internet, though for my money he predicted the internet in the same way that Ender’s Game predicted 4chan (you forgot that part of the novel, didn’t you?). Or maybe he predicted the subreddit, and the idea of a global space for the congregation of subject-matter expertise. He also largely stopped publishing in scientific journals to be in popular ones, in part because of how his work overlapped with the overpopulation crisis. And this is where the book started to let me down.
The author is fully journalistic about the process of documenting Calhoun’s life. I cannot fault that, but I do think that here is where it should not have been.
It is difficult to sum up the cultural cache of overpopulation in the mid to late 20th Century. Coming from, and persisting with, racist overtones, it became a sort of idée fixe that shows up everywhere for about two decades, in part due to the celebrity scientist status of proponents like Paul Ehrlich (who the book mentions largely in the context of his frequent talk show appearances) and Calhoun himself.
Calhoun is in the thick of it, both indirectly in the way that his works connections with overpopulation was the point of interest of most of the pundits and journalists to look at it, but also directly. Calhoun’s quasi-esoteric thoughts about the future of humanity treated it as the singular problem to solve, and his visions of the future related to the question of how best to solve it.
Pointedly, this seems to be a major schism between Calhoun and a lot of the doomsayers around the alleged “population bomb.” He considered overpopulation an existential threat to human life, but also felt that intellectual or cultural solutions existed, as opposed to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Eugenics! more customarily floated. One of his rat utopia experiments was specifically developed to the end of fostering mutuality and cooperation, which he believed to be a major element of the cure.
The overpopulation crisis did not manifest. Whether that means it never was, or that we solved it, is debated. (I tend to side with the third option of it being a bad expression of other problems that we still live to solve.) But, if only for some of its less savory bits of history, I think that a direct address of the topic is appropriate, in the same way that we might be frank about any good scientist’s bad ideas. In fact, it is more important here. This is not the usual narrative of someone like Agassiz of a great scientist with terrible beliefs. This is someone who saw positive possibilities in something that usually lead people to evil beliefs.
This is a minor point, and only weakens the book. The major point, however, is the discussion has no context to it. Put inelegantly, what the living ***** does any of this mean?
For a book written by a professor and well-established science writer, the text comes off as wholly incurious. Have the lines of Calhoun’s research been further elaborated or studied? Replicated? Are there alternate theories? Is the whole of it dismissed as weird science? There are notes about contemporaneous critiques, and some discussion of how different modern mouse studies are, as well as how much scientists now frown on the sort of anthropomorphic language that Calhoun used so well. Even if science walked away from the area altogether, someone still ought to be able to opine on the matter. You can’t even do the Milgram or Keyes experiments any more, but there are whole industries around interpreting the work.
In short, having read the book, I now feel the need to find the book about the book. I cannot fault the author, in the sense that the book is exactly what it promised to be. But I feel informed without feeling educated.
My thanks to the author, Lee Alan Dugatkin, for writing the book and to the University of Chicago Press for making the ARC available to me.
* - The CTA did not start naming lines for colors until 1993. In fact, there was not a CTA, only one of the predecessor entities, which I think at this point has unified what would become the Purple line and the Red line. But ah ha! This was a trap all along. You would not take the Purple line to the Red line to get from Northwestern to U. of C.: you would take the Purple, to the Red, to the Green. Or the Ls that these would become. Though maybe Calhoun liked a walk. I also feel it necessary to add here that the L probably is the spiritual successor to a rat utopia.
This is a biography of John Calhoun. Calhoun was an ethologist (it means the study of animal behaviors, specifically as part of a group or between animals of the same species) in the early days of the codification of the field, and did his most famous work with rat and mouse populations, and specifically his experiment in what he called ‘rat utopia.’ He has been somewhat forgotten, maybe with good cause. Even I had him conflated with Bruce Alexander (who did rat park, not rat utopia).
The book is focused on his work. He did do his masters and doctoral work at Northwestern, provoking my Chicago fact-check for the book: there was not a Red or Purple line in 1938.* Admittedly, the author makes it seem like his life was his work and his home orderly and ordinary.
Calhoun’s work started with his noticing that rat populations for an area tended to be stable at a certain number, even if the area had the resources to support more rats. Even if the number was artificially increased or decreased, it would float to that number. So he created an experimentally perfect place for rats, that he would call rat utopia, where all their needs were met, but where the natural processes would stick population at that increased number in order to see what would happen.
From there, shit got weird.
Shit got weird in the experiment, as the rat populations start to exhibit unusual behaviors, made more aberrant still via Calhoun’s gift of a turn of phrase, like “behavior sink” or “universal autism.” I am consciously not going to try to describe the results of what happen for reasons that ought to come clear later, but when Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson write about your work, you know it produced read-worthy information.
But shit also got weird in Calhoun. The analogy is the family-friendly John C. Lilly. Calhoun reacted to the dystopias he created for rats by envisioning utopias for humans. He even wrote a sci-fi novel that sounds like it was wisely left unfinished. Calhoun was intense about the idea of a philosophy that would provide what humanity needed to continue to thrive. It does not seem like he had an answer for that philosophy, but he could describe the outline of it.
In the process, he allegedly predicted the internet, though for my money he predicted the internet in the same way that Ender’s Game predicted 4chan (you forgot that part of the novel, didn’t you?). Or maybe he predicted the subreddit, and the idea of a global space for the congregation of subject-matter expertise. He also largely stopped publishing in scientific journals to be in popular ones, in part because of how his work overlapped with the overpopulation crisis. And this is where the book started to let me down.
The author is fully journalistic about the process of documenting Calhoun’s life. I cannot fault that, but I do think that here is where it should not have been.
It is difficult to sum up the cultural cache of overpopulation in the mid to late 20th Century. Coming from, and persisting with, racist overtones, it became a sort of idée fixe that shows up everywhere for about two decades, in part due to the celebrity scientist status of proponents like Paul Ehrlich (who the book mentions largely in the context of his frequent talk show appearances) and Calhoun himself.
Calhoun is in the thick of it, both indirectly in the way that his works connections with overpopulation was the point of interest of most of the pundits and journalists to look at it, but also directly. Calhoun’s quasi-esoteric thoughts about the future of humanity treated it as the singular problem to solve, and his visions of the future related to the question of how best to solve it.
Pointedly, this seems to be a major schism between Calhoun and a lot of the doomsayers around the alleged “population bomb.” He considered overpopulation an existential threat to human life, but also felt that intellectual or cultural solutions existed, as opposed to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Eugenics! more customarily floated. One of his rat utopia experiments was specifically developed to the end of fostering mutuality and cooperation, which he believed to be a major element of the cure.
The overpopulation crisis did not manifest. Whether that means it never was, or that we solved it, is debated. (I tend to side with the third option of it being a bad expression of other problems that we still live to solve.) But, if only for some of its less savory bits of history, I think that a direct address of the topic is appropriate, in the same way that we might be frank about any good scientist’s bad ideas. In fact, it is more important here. This is not the usual narrative of someone like Agassiz of a great scientist with terrible beliefs. This is someone who saw positive possibilities in something that usually lead people to evil beliefs.
This is a minor point, and only weakens the book. The major point, however, is the discussion has no context to it. Put inelegantly, what the living ***** does any of this mean?
For a book written by a professor and well-established science writer, the text comes off as wholly incurious. Have the lines of Calhoun’s research been further elaborated or studied? Replicated? Are there alternate theories? Is the whole of it dismissed as weird science? There are notes about contemporaneous critiques, and some discussion of how different modern mouse studies are, as well as how much scientists now frown on the sort of anthropomorphic language that Calhoun used so well. Even if science walked away from the area altogether, someone still ought to be able to opine on the matter. You can’t even do the Milgram or Keyes experiments any more, but there are whole industries around interpreting the work.
In short, having read the book, I now feel the need to find the book about the book. I cannot fault the author, in the sense that the book is exactly what it promised to be. But I feel informed without feeling educated.
My thanks to the author, Lee Alan Dugatkin, for writing the book and to the University of Chicago Press for making the ARC available to me.
* - The CTA did not start naming lines for colors until 1993. In fact, there was not a CTA, only one of the predecessor entities, which I think at this point has unified what would become the Purple line and the Red line. But ah ha! This was a trap all along. You would not take the Purple line to the Red line to get from Northwestern to U. of C.: you would take the Purple, to the Red, to the Green. Or the Ls that these would become. Though maybe Calhoun liked a walk. I also feel it necessary to add here that the L probably is the spiritual successor to a rat utopia.
April 5, 2024
I had learned about Dr. Calhoun’s work through a short video that made me curious, and was delighted, when I saw this book, to be able to learn more about it !
Dr Calhoun’s Mousery could be divided in 3 parts : his early life and first experiments, followed by global scientific recognition, then last experiments and career end.
The first part is fascinating. After a short introduction of what brought the professor to studying animal behavior, his first experiment on the impact of population on rats’ ways of feeding and interacting with each other is thoroughly developed : setup (in his own garden !), observations through time, conclusions and open questions that results. In particular, a first link is made with human behavior - that will be dug deeper over the course of the book.
This experiment led him to scientific recognition, with funds, staff and a building being made available to him for further research over years. The second part of the book explains well these bigger scale experiments : initial setup, what was hoped - and started - to be observed, how the first conclusions could be applied to human behavior… And then, I was lost.
The book focus wasn’t on the research anymore, but described each article, speech, conference, impact on other researchers, even a single mention in a thesis of Calhoun’s work. Although it seems a very complete bibliography of its impact on others, and I have to salute M. Dugaktin and his assistant’s enormous effort for gathering such detailed information, this was too much for me. I found myself skipping paragraphs and paragraphs, only starting to read again through what seemed major impact events, until the focus shifted on the science again.
The last part is as fascinating as the first one : new experiments, new results, further open questions… And the refined point of view of Dr. Calhoun : what if he and his team observed with rats overpopulation was applicable to humanity ? Indeed, would coming back to more local communities, solidarity and cooperation be a solution to social loneliness, aggressive behaviors and ostracism ?
A great conclusion that leaves the reader wondering !
Dr Calhoun’s Mousery could be divided in 3 parts : his early life and first experiments, followed by global scientific recognition, then last experiments and career end.
The first part is fascinating. After a short introduction of what brought the professor to studying animal behavior, his first experiment on the impact of population on rats’ ways of feeding and interacting with each other is thoroughly developed : setup (in his own garden !), observations through time, conclusions and open questions that results. In particular, a first link is made with human behavior - that will be dug deeper over the course of the book.
This experiment led him to scientific recognition, with funds, staff and a building being made available to him for further research over years. The second part of the book explains well these bigger scale experiments : initial setup, what was hoped - and started - to be observed, how the first conclusions could be applied to human behavior… And then, I was lost.
The book focus wasn’t on the research anymore, but described each article, speech, conference, impact on other researchers, even a single mention in a thesis of Calhoun’s work. Although it seems a very complete bibliography of its impact on others, and I have to salute M. Dugaktin and his assistant’s enormous effort for gathering such detailed information, this was too much for me. I found myself skipping paragraphs and paragraphs, only starting to read again through what seemed major impact events, until the focus shifted on the science again.
The last part is as fascinating as the first one : new experiments, new results, further open questions… And the refined point of view of Dr. Calhoun : what if he and his team observed with rats overpopulation was applicable to humanity ? Indeed, would coming back to more local communities, solidarity and cooperation be a solution to social loneliness, aggressive behaviors and ostracism ?
A great conclusion that leaves the reader wondering !
June 30, 2025
The story is fascinating, I first heard about it in Twitter. A biology experimenter and a rat specialist by the name of John Calhoun built a series of rat utopias throughout the years, one of them built somewhere in the middle of Maryland in a barn belonging to the Institute of Mental Health. The famous of which he labeled Universe 25, is a universe where mice are free from lack of food or water, predator, and invasion from similar species. Technically, the enclosure could support tens of thousands of mice, a mice utopia, essentially. But guess what happened? In all the universes, the highest mice population reached 2200, and not more. Suffering from overpopulation (something Calhoun referred to as 'behavioral sink'), the mice bumped so much into each other that it ended up changing their behavior, blunting their survival instinct, disappearing their social and sexual instincts. A type of rat emerged which Calhoun referred to as 'the beautiful ones', in which these mice focus so much on grooming themselves, and isolated themselves from any kind of social contact and dominance hierarchy contests. Even the females have stopped to be able to properly take care of their babies. At the end, the number of surviving babies declined, and the population collapsed. It reminds me of modern Japan. While the behavior of humans are not necessarily transferrable from mice/rat, we share many of the same neurochemistry, so we should take note. Who can't see the hippies or the modern 'lay downers' of modern China, or the hikikomori of Japan? A trend of shunting marriage and childbirth that is endemic in many developed economies.
A promising story that could have been better developed, if the author didn't focus too much on how the experiment inspired narratives or stories in popular culture. And I think there are too much digression to how it influenced subsequent interests of Calhoun and his institute. Much of the discussion is too technical and were reduced to names and labels.
A promising story that could have been better developed, if the author didn't focus too much on how the experiment inspired narratives or stories in popular culture. And I think there are too much digression to how it influenced subsequent interests of Calhoun and his institute. Much of the discussion is too technical and were reduced to names and labels.
April 15, 2024
Dr. Calhoun's Mousery tells the fascinating story of Dr. John Calhoun's life with an emphasis on the brilliant experiments that he conducted on rodent behavior in community settings. I really enjoyed the first part of the book that talked about Dr. Calhoun's career and went into detail on the experimental design of his projects and the results. The second half of the book was a little slow and discussed publications that cited Dr. Calhoun's work.
In modern times, Dr. Calhoun's work is not largely cited and the book provides some explanations on the reason for this. As a scientist I really enjoyed this book, especially the first half. Dr. Calhoun was a brilliant experimentalist. I think that it is challenging to try to extrapolate the results in controlled rodent colonies to real human life. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
In modern times, Dr. Calhoun's work is not largely cited and the book provides some explanations on the reason for this. As a scientist I really enjoyed this book, especially the first half. Dr. Calhoun was a brilliant experimentalist. I think that it is challenging to try to extrapolate the results in controlled rodent colonies to real human life. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
December 20, 2025
This is an excellent history of Dr. Calhoun’s studies and contributions. Dugatkin is even-handed in presenting this material and many of the negative or middling ratings here probably stem from that. Many likely want to read something salacious about how Dr. Calhoun’s work predicts some terrible calamities facing the human race. But, as Dugatkin points out, Dr. Calhoun actually took his experiments to the point where he showed that cooperation mitigates the problems he first noted with his rat and mouse experiments. If you’re interested in understanding the facts of Dr. Calhoun’s work, his influence on science, and some tidbits about his eccentricities and the inner workings of a scientific career, this book is a winner. If you want to be shocked, you may want to look elsewhere.
August 26, 2025
Behavioral ecologist Dr. John Calhoun studied population dynamics in rodent colonies in the 1960s when people worried about “the population bomb” like we worry about climate change today. His rodent colonies collapsed after they became overcrowded. With a knack for popularizing his science, his rodent studies fed a sense that we are all doomed to societal collapse. The only way out, he argued, is with fresh ideas that are larger than any one person can conceive. He argued for a “hive mind” a generation before the Internet became a reality.
Read more at https://bookmanreader.blogspot.com/20...
Read more at https://bookmanreader.blogspot.com/20...
January 1, 2025
What a fascinating story! These are the kinds of books that make science so much fun. People who don't ever do science think it's just a paid-for service, but this shows how real scientists ask questions and follow research in unexpected directions. This is interesting as a biography and as a science book. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.
November 7, 2024
Very interesting for learning more about Dr. Calhoun's life and inspiring for both scientists and non-scientists. A slightly too lengthy book that would have benefited from being shorter to be more direct.
December 28, 2024
I did not realise this was a biography I hate pretentious bookstores that don’t tell you what the book is about
August 2, 2025
Extremely dry. If you enjoy rat and mice biology, this may be more your speed.
January 6, 2026
Muy bueno, lo malo es que no está en español
August 16, 2024
Read my full review of this book in an upcoming major library trade publication.
December 7, 2024
The next phase shift in evolution should utilize computer-like devices and interlink systems of them to simulate biological brain function to manipulate more effectively thought products of the human brain and process them for return use in human reflection. During the coming era, the already apparent mutualism between humans and information metabolizing machines will become more pronounced. Machines will more and more represent enlargements of human being, identity, and capacity rather independent forms of life. Together they will form a higher order of life, increasing negentropy on earth through a natural process of affective and intellectual reactivity.
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The process of acquiring and maintaining cooperative behavior, should become particularly relevant during the 1975-2175 evolutionary transition when cooperating in enhancing information metabolism is likely to become much more important.
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Our success in being human has so far been derived from our honoring deviance more than tradition ... Now, we must seek diligently for those creative deviants from whom alone will come the conceptualizations of an evolutionary designing process which can assure an open-ended future - toward whose realization we can all participate.
JSM made a similar argument more than two hundred years earlier: 'The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.'
####
The process of acquiring and maintaining cooperative behavior, should become particularly relevant during the 1975-2175 evolutionary transition when cooperating in enhancing information metabolism is likely to become much more important.
####
Our success in being human has so far been derived from our honoring deviance more than tradition ... Now, we must seek diligently for those creative deviants from whom alone will come the conceptualizations of an evolutionary designing process which can assure an open-ended future - toward whose realization we can all participate.
JSM made a similar argument more than two hundred years earlier: 'The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.'
May 8, 2024
*****O received this ARC free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
This book was not quite what I expected. If you are interested in the study of mice and rats and the possible relation to human interaction this is for you.
As for me, I found it very dry. A few facts were interesting but not enough to really keep me interested.
This book was not quite what I expected. If you are interested in the study of mice and rats and the possible relation to human interaction this is for you.
As for me, I found it very dry. A few facts were interesting but not enough to really keep me interested.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews