The Mouse Utopia Experiment: The Controversial History of the Experiment that Predicted the Collapse of Human Society

In 1968, biologist John Calhoun began an experiment at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland. Calhoun was interested in discovering the factors that drove and limited rodent population growth; he had joined the Rodent Ecology Project in Baltimore in 1946, and he and other members of the project had become interested in understanding how to reduce rodent pests in America's cities without the use of poison.

Calhoun had already undertaken similar experiments. In fact, this would...