John B. Calhoun
John Bumpass Calhoun (born May 11, 1917 in Elkton , Tennessee , † September 7, 1995 ) was an American ethologist and behaviorist , known for his study of population density and its effects on behavior. He claimed that the effects of overpopulation on rodents could serve as a model for the future of the human race.
In his work Calhoun coined the term behavior Valley ( Behavioral Sink ) to the collapse of describing the behavior that resulted from overcrowding; With another term he coined, The Beauties , he described passive individuals who withdrew from all social interactions in such a situation. His work gained worldwide recognition. He has spoken at conferences around the world, and his opinion has been sought by institutions as diverse as NASA and local governments regarding overcrowding in prisons. Calhoun's rat studies were used as the basis for developing Edward T. Hall's 1966 proxemics theories.
Life
John B. Calhoun was born the third child of James Calhoun and Fern Madole Calhoun. He had an older sister and two younger brothers; the first child of the parents died early. His father was a headmaster in the Tennessee school administration, his mother an artist. Even in school he was interested in birds and bird habits. At the age of 15, he published his first article in The Migrant , the journal of the Tennessee Ornithological Society .
Early Studies
After graduating from high school, he taught at Emory University and Ohio State University . In 1946, he and his wife Edith moved to Towson , Maryland , a suburb of Baltimore . Calhoun worked on the Rodent Ecology Project at Johns Hopkins University .
In March 1947, he began a 28-month study of a colony of brown rats in an outdoor area of 930 square meters. Although the five females in an area of this size could theoretically have produced 5,000 healthy offspring over that period, Calhoun found that the population never exceeded 200 individuals and stabilized at 150. In addition, the rats were not scattered across the entire area by chance, but had organized themselves into twelve or thirteen local colonies of a dozen rats each. He found that twelve rats are the maximum number that can live harmoniously in a natural group, above which stress and psychological effects act as group separation forces.
Further research
For a number of years, Calhoun conducted overpopulation experiments in brown rats and mice.
While Calhoun was working at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1954 , he began numerous experiments with rats and mice. During his initial testing, he placed about 32 to 56 rodents in a 10 by 14 foot enclosure in a Montgomery County barn . He divided the room into four rooms. Each room was specially created to house a dozen adult brown rats. The rats were able to move between rooms via ramps. Since Calhoun provided unlimited resources such as water and food, but also protection from predators as well as from disease and storms, the rats were described as being in a "rat utopia" or in a "mouse paradise".
In a report dated February 1, 1962, Calhoun coined the term " behavior sink ". In a Scientific American article entitled " Population Density and Social Pathology " on the rat experiment, he described the behavior as follows:
" Many [female rats] were unable to fully carry their gestation or survive the litter if they did. An even larger number neglected their maternal functions shortly after successful litter. Among the males the behavioral disorders ranged from sexual Deviation to cannibalism and frenetic hyperactivity to a pathological retreat from which individuals would appear only to eat, drink and move around while the other members of the community were asleep.The social organization of the animals showed similar disturbances .
The common source of these disturbances was most evident in the populations of our first series of three experiments in which we observed the evolution of what we called a behavioral sink.
The animals would huddle together in large numbers in one of the four interconnected cages in which the colony was kept. Up to 60 of the 80 rats in each experimental population would congregate in a cage during feeding. Individual rats rarely ate, except in the company of other rats. As a result, extreme population densities developed in the cage adopted for eating, leaving the others sparsely populated.
[...] In the experiments in which the behavioral sink developed, infant mortality reached levels of up to 96% among the most disoriented groups in the population. "
After his earlier experiments with rats, Calhoun created his " Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice " in 1972 , which pushed his experimental approach to the limit: a cage for mice, 101 inches square, with unlimited space Access to food and water to support any population growth.
In his most famous experiment in the Universe 25 series , the population peaked at 2,200 mice, then exhibited a variety of abnormal, often destructive behaviors, and then collapsed. By the 600th day the population was on the way to extinction.
Calhoun's work has been viewed as an animal model of social breakdown, and his research has become a touchstone of urban sociology and psychology in general.
Web links
- Website about Calhoun with curriculum vitae
- RESEARCH / OVERPOPULATION: Silent crowd . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1971 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://johnbcalhoun.com/bio/
- ^ "Population Density and Social Pathology". Scientific American, accessed May 3, 2017 .
- ^ "The Behavioral Sink". Cabinet Magazine, 2011, accessed May 3, 2017 .
- ↑ JB Calhoun: Population density and social pathology. In: California medicine. Volume 113, Number 5, November 1970, p. 54, PMID 18730425 , PMC 1501789 (free full text).
- ^ "Behavioral changes due to overpopulation in mice". Portland State University, accessed May 3, 2017 .
- ^ Hock, Roger R .: Forty Studies that Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research (5th Edition). In: ISBN 0-13-114729-3 . Prentice Hall, 2004, accessed May 3, 2017 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Calhoun, John B. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Calhoun, John Bumpass (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American ethologist and behaviorist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 11, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Elkton , Tennessee |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 7, 1995 |