So it wasn't an utopia. The mice had enough water and food, but they ran out of living space. It's so obvious I can't understand nobody pointed it out yet.
there's never gonna be "enough space" for animals that do not understand the concept of overcrowding and planned parenthood.
That's the point of the experiment: in a food rich environment with no predators and no diseases, without human intervention (or intelligent planning if you prefer) everything is gonna deteriorate to the point of no return.
Nature is all about balance and we humans do nothing to follow that predicament, so if we are not careful and let things go by themselves, we risk of giving birth to hell on Earth.
Take the Yellowstone example.
Yellowstone is not a small and confined space and yet when wolves disappeared, herbivores, moose in particular, started growing in number exponentially, posing a threat to the ecosystem because, with no predators around, young moose could freely walk all over the park and started eating too-young trees, basically preventing them from growing.
Then wolves were re-introduced, and even though it's still unclear if the damages caused by moose can be undone, they at least stopped things from getting worse, cause wolves mainly prey on moose.
There's the ever-so-remote possibility that this was precisely the point:
But the thing is, this wasn’t Calhoun’s first rodent utopia. This was the 25th iteration. And by this point he knew how quickly mouse heaven could deteriorate into mouse hell.
I think the point is that the population would continue to grow until they run out of living space and go extinct regardless of the exact size of the experiment.
Surprisingly, this is the best article thus far in pointing out the issues arising from a lack of space. This is the only article that seems to even address the lack of space.
That's the point of the experiment: in a food rich environment with no predators and no diseases, without human intervention (or intelligent planning if you prefer) everything is gonna deteriorate to the point of no return.
Nature is all about balance and we humans do nothing to follow that predicament, so if we are not careful and let things go by themselves, we risk of giving birth to hell on Earth.
Take the Yellowstone example.
Yellowstone is not a small and confined space and yet when wolves disappeared, herbivores, moose in particular, started growing in number exponentially, posing a threat to the ecosystem because, with no predators around, young moose could freely walk all over the park and started eating too-young trees, basically preventing them from growing.
Then wolves were re-introduced, and even though it's still unclear if the damages caused by moose can be undone, they at least stopped things from getting worse, cause wolves mainly prey on moose.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/yellowsto...