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A scientist created a 'utopia' for mice and then they all started dying

The results are fascinating, but are they relevant to humanity?

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How could Mouse Heaven go so terribly wrong?

In 1968 John Calhoun, a scientist and animal behavioralist, decided to create a "utopia" for mice. It would have unlimited food and water, with beautiful nesting spaces and plenty of materials for the mice to make cozy homes with. Sweet experiment! the mice were probably thinking. Much better than the Maybelline trials we're used to.

However, there was a catch, of course. There was one thing the utopia would be lacking, and that would be physical space. As the mouse population grew, overcrowding would become an issue, and Calhoun wanted to study the problems this would potentially cause. That sound you hear is the collective sigh of the disappointed mice who were stoked about the 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffet.

The experiment, dubbed Universe 25, began when Calhoun introduced four mouse "couples" into the utopian complex. A year or so later, it was overrun and the conditions had turned hellish, even though the mice had not run out of food or water.

mouse, mice, animals, science, research, studies"The conditions had turned WHAT?"Giphy

Initially, for just the eight original mice, the square box Calhoun built included 256 nesting boxes (or apartments) stacked on top of one another. Water bottles and food dispensers were located all along the nesting spots, and mice could travel throughout the complex at will via mesh tunnels. The starter mice were also screened for diseases and the population was obviously protected from predators. The climate was controlled and comfortable. Conditions were perfect.

The first mouse pups showed up a little over three months later, with the population of the colony doubling every 55 days. Nineteen months later, there were 2200 mice living inside the box. With such perfect surroundings, the infant mortality rate was practically zero, leading to the rapid rise in numbers.

mice, mouse experiments, scientific research, animal experiments, overpopulationJohn Calhoun poses with his rodents inside the mouse utopia.Yoichi R Okamoto, Public Domain


By month 19, this rodent utopia had become an overcrowded hellscape. Calhoun noticed three alarming trends, in particular.

In short, everything was devolving into chaos and the very society of the mice began to collapse at a rapid rate.

The "Beautiful Ones" and the "Dropouts": Mice have a complex social hierarchy ruled by dominant alpha males. Sam Kean of Science History Institute Museum & Library notes that, in the wild, non-dominant males (the ones who lose macho showdowns) can skip town and start over somewhere else. But in the close quarters of Calhoun's experiment, with nowhere to hide, they were forced to hang around and viciously battle with each other over scraps. Eventually, non-dominant male mice, which Calhoun called the "Beautiful Ones," withdrew from society completely and only ate, slept, and groomed themselves.

Though resources were unlimited, certain aggressive males hoarded them anyway: The alpha males ruled over everything in the once-utopian mouse society. They kept harems of females in the apartments to mate with and fought fiercely to defend their territory. But new waves of hungry young male mice kept coming and coming, and eventually even the most dominant alphas abandoned their posts. This led to more attacks on nursing females, which in turn led to more mothers kicking their pups out of the nest early.

Birth rate declined dramatically: With the non-dominant males giving up completely and focusing on #SelfCare, dominant males too exhausted from endless battles, and females sick and tired of it all (many became asexual hermits by the end), stopped mating and giving birth entirely. Once this happened, the society was doomed. Even with plenty of food still available, cannibalism was rampant.

Calhoun was not shy about drawing parallels between his research and humanity. "I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution," he once wrote.


mice, mouse experiments, scientific studies, universe 25, sociology, overpopulationAlpha male mice, anyone? Photo by Kanashi on Unsplash

There are aspects of his wild experiment that certainly sound familiar.

We live in a world with plenty of resources for everyone, but a few select people hoard more than their fair share. When you think of the rodent "apartments," it's hard not to picture densely packed urban environments where people are stacked on top of each other at every turn. Maybe on some level some of us can relate to the “Beautiful Ones” and their urge to not participate in all the ugliness and just sequester and groom themselves. You can make an argument that when the mice stopped having to worry about food and shelter, it removed the element of challenge from their lives and left them lost–like many of us are lucky enough to not have to wonder where our next meal comes from, and maybe that has something to do with our never-ending search for meaning. Some even go so far as to link more people choosing to delay having children, or not have children at all, with the collapsing society of the mice.

But Calhoun's work has also been heavily scrutinized, with some claiming it's based on shaky science. And in the end, there’s the small matter that humans are not mice. We are infinitely more complicated, and so much better suited to adapting to our environments. Kean writes, "Ultimately Calhoun’s work functions like a Rorschach blot—people see what they want to see."

It's fascinating and thought-provoking nonetheless.

Photo by Anthony Duran on Unsplash

Belgian Malinois, the smartest dog breed.

If you Google "smartest dog breeds," most lists you'll find put border collies in the No. 1 spot, followed in some order by poodles, German shepherds, and golden retrievers. But a 2023 study of canine cognition from the University of Helsinki puts a whole different breed at the top of the ladder—one that most of us have probably seen before but haven't heard the name of—the Belgian Malinois.

Best known as a police or security dog, the Belgian Malinois is a shepherd breed that looks very similar to a German shepherd. Both breeds are of similar height and coloring, but the Malinois is lighter weight and its ears are more triangular-shaped, according to the American Kennel Club.

So, what is it that makes the Belgian Malinois more intelligent than other dog breeds?

Belgian Malinois Male Puppy

Belgian Malinois Male Puppy.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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The study published in Scientific Reports analyzed 1,002 dogs from 13 different breeds using a battery of smartDOG cognition tests. These tests involve food reward tasks that determine a dog's capacity for memory, problem-solving, impulse control, reading human gestures, copying human behavior, and logical reasoning. Despite a wide field of research on dogs, only a handful of studies have examined cognition of specific breeds instead of breed groups. Additionally, not much empirical research has been done on nonsocial cognitive traits such as memory, inhibitory control, spatial problem-solving, and logical reasoning—all of which were covered in this study.

The researchers identified a few different tests as signifying high intelligence. For the most significant measure of intelligence—logical reasoning—the study revealed no significant difference between the dog breeds. So, according to The Telegraph, the three tests the authors singled out instead for measuring and comparing intelligence were:

- A V-detour test, in which a dog had to detour around a transparent V-shaped fence to get to a food reward, showing some problem-solving ability.

- A human gesture reading test, in which a dog's response to five gestures—constant pointing, brief pointing, pointing with the foot, pointing at something while facing another direction, and following a human's gaze—was measured.

- An unsolvable task test, in which a dog tries to access food in an unopenable box, measuring independence and how quickly a dog asked a human for help.

The Belgian Malinois scored 35 out of a possible 39 points on these three tasks, making it the top scorer for high intelligence overall. Border collies came in second with 26 points and hovawarts came in third at 25 points.

brown and black german shepherd lying on white and gray area rugPhoto by Gerrie van der Walt on Unsplash

The study authors point out that there are strengths and weaknesses in most breeds. Some score very high on some tests and very low on others. Some breeds saw middle-of-the-road scores across most tests.

According to IFLScience, one weakness the Malinois showed was in the cylinder test, in which a dog is taught to retrieve a piece of food from inside an opaque cylinder. The opaque cylinder then gets replaced with a transparent one to see if the dog will go around to the end of the cylinder to retrieve the treat, as it did with the opaque one, or try to go directly through the side of the cylinder to get to it. This test measures inhibition, and the Malinois scored among the lowest of all breeds on it.

Every dog has its bright and dim spots, but it's clear why the Malinois is a dog of choice for security work: high intelligence is necessary, of course, but even being low on inhibition can be seen as a plus for a working dog that needs to be highly responsive and act quickly when needed.

“The Belgian Shepherd Malinois stood out in many of the cognitive tasks, having very good results in a majority of the tests,” study author and owner and CEO of smartDOG Dr. Katriina Tiira told The Telegraph.

“Border Collies also performed well in many of the tests," she added.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

Photo by kitsanoo on Unsplash

Some cats are scary smart.

As someone who has had cats as pets all my life, I can attest to the range of intelligence our feline friends possess. Some cats have pebbles for brains, while others can wow you with their abilities.

Then there are the spooky smart cats. The ones you can see calculating in real time. The ones who convince you they could plot your demise if you don't bend to their whims and they'd probably leave no evidence.

Ones like the cat in a viral video (shared by @catshouldnt on X) who not only knew how to open a door but who figured out how to remove the door jam inserted at the top of the door first so it could successfully get out.


Even knowing the outcome, it's impressive to watch:

I've watched my cat calculate how to jump from the nightstand to the top cabinet of our closet, and that's always fun. The understanding of geometry and physics cats seem to intuitively possess is wild to witness, and the fact that my cat almost always makes seemingly impossible jumps perfectly never fails to impress me.

But this cat? This cat is on a whole other level. When you think about the thought process here, how any steps it requires in a specific order to open the door, it's pretty incredible that a cat could figure it out.

Commenters weighed in on Reddit with how their own cats handle doors:

"We had a cat like that when I was a kid. He would usually grab the knob and then swing his chonk ass back and forth to open it."

"My cat either rams it open with her head, pulls it open from the bottom, or jumps for the handle. She WILL get in eventually."

"Meanwhile one of my cats is completely defeated by a door that's open a inch."

"Meanwhile i have a cat door taped open because my cat is too dumb to push it."

"I met a cat that tried to claw through the hinge side of a door that was half open, then meow for help."

Seriously, cats' brains range from boxes of rocks to Einstein. It's incredible.

People like to compare cat and dog intelligence to human children and determine an age equivalent, but veterinarian Dr. Cathy Barnette shared on Cats.com that those comparisons aren't really accurate. A 2016 study did show that cats have about twice as many neurons as dogs, which could indicate that cats are smarter than dogs at the very least, but studies are mixed and intelligence in animals is notoriously difficult to measure.

There's no question about the smarts on this cat, though. If I were that owner, I think I'd be sleeping with one eye open.

How does an octopus say "cheese"?

Presumably it sounds like a muffled underwater version of "Silly humans, bow down to your cephalopod overlords," but I can't say that we'll ever know for sure.

What we do know for sure is that an octopus named Rambo has mastered the art of the f-stop and is now selling her own original photographs to visitors at the New Zealand aquarium she calls home.


"Lights! Camera! Tentacle!" GIF via Sony New Zealand/YouTube.

Like many talented artists, this eight-armed savant is, erm, also a bit of a diva.

"On day two, she pulled the camera off, ripped it up, smashed it to bits and spat it out,"behaviorist Mark Vette recalled. "We realized how powerful she was."

They went through a dozen iterations of the camera case before they settled on one that was strong enough to withstand her tentacled fury. (That's also how she got her name.)

"What is this cheap plastic crap? They don't make cameras like they used to." GIF via One News/TV New Zealand.

Fortunately, Rambo's creative endeavor is sponsored by Sony, who happily provided her with a new TX30 camera in the aftermath of her artistic outburst. You can even check out a whole gallery of her work on their Facebook page, allowing you'll have to forgive the occasional stray tentacle sneaking into the frame.

(In other words: Yes, this was originally part of a cross-promotional marketing opportunity, but that doesn't make it any less cool.)

"Make love to the camera, baby, yes, that's right. You're a natural!" GIF from Sony New Zealand/YouTube.

Rambo's not the only pictorially inclined marine mollusk either.

In March 2015, an octopus at Middlebury College turned the lens on his scientific observers. A digital media producer at the school visited a neuroscience laboratory where students were studying the clever creature. Mostly, they wanted to know if an octopus could learn by observing the actions of other octopuses.

But when they placed a GoPro in his tank, the octopus decided to turn things around and observe his own observers.

"No photos 'til I've had my coffee." GIF via Benjamin Savard/The Washington Post.

"I was just trying to brainstorm different ideas of how to show off the kind of unique research that's going on here and in ways that would be engaging," one of the students told The Washington Post. "I think the octopus's timing was great. I was just in the right place at the right time."

This all begs the question: How do octopuses even see?!

The obvious answer is, of course, with their eyes. Which is true. Ish. But like most things involving octopuses, the answer is much weirder and much more fascinating than that.

Unlike us lowly humans with our feeble brains that serve as central processing stations for our entire fragile bodies, octopus tentacles are capable of functioning as their own independent nervous systems. That's right: Each of those squirmy limbs with the suckers on the bottom basically have a mind of their own.

"Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful." GIF via Sony New Zealand/YouTube.

And just beneath the surface of the skin, those writhing minds are covered in cells called chromatophores, each of which is kind of like its own little painter's palette. These chromatophores can change color, which is how the octopus camouflages itself to lash out at unsuspecting passersby.

But they also contain opsins, the same light-sensitive proteins that are found in eye retinas. Which basically means that octopus skin can sense light and color without any help from the creature's brain.

That's right, they "see" with their freakin' tentacles!

"Oh no! The humans are catching on to us! Must escape!" GIF via Sony New Zealand/YouTube.

Honestly it's not entirely clear just how clever this specific photo-taking endeavor really is. But still!

Rambo was trained, like animals often are, using a food reward system. And her subjects all stand in a designated photobooth, within the range of the stationary camera. Obviously she's helped along by that handy autofocus feature, too — although that shouldn't necessarily be a slight against her intelligence, considering that most humans rely on that as well.

"What is 'art,' anyway? What does it truly mean to see, or to express oneself? Is art driven by intention, or the manifestation of the subconscious?" — a philosophtopus, probably. GIF via One News/TV New Zealand.

But that shouldn't detract from the fact that octopuses are weird, complicated, fascinating creatures, and we should consider ourselves lucky to share this wonderful planet alongside them.

Check out this behind-the-scenes video of Rambo the Octographer at work: