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Dr. Calhoun’s Mousery By Lee Alan Dugatkin — Review

A compelling biography about a groundbreaking scientist and his controversial work, using rodent cities — rodentopias — to identify and examine the potential catastrophes that might befall human overpopulation.

© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee

Laboratory mouse. (Credit: Rama / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)

Extinction is everywhere these days, mainly driven by unchecked human overpopulation, ecocidal abuses and runaway greed. But humanity itself should beware of their own impending doom.

What might humanity’s “end days” look like? The topic of the last days of humanity has occupied many dystopian and science fiction writers, but has not really captured the interest of scientists in a systematic and rigorous way. But there was one scientist, an ethologist (animal behaviorist) named John B. Calhoun, who was interested to find the answers to the many questions of what the extinction of humanity might look like. In his quest for answers, he conducted an 18-year long study with a ‘rodent utopia’ that he designed. His findings about population dynamics in his captive rat and mouse populations shocked most people in the mid-1950s to the early-1970s, making him a scientific celebrity although, strangely, most of his work is forgotten today.

Like with all scientific investigations, these experiments looked quite different at the beginning…

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𝐆𝐫𝐫𝐥𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭, scientist & journalist
𝐆𝐫𝐫𝐥𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭, scientist & journalist

Written by 𝐆𝐫𝐫𝐥𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭, scientist & journalist

PhD evolutionary ecology/ornithology. Psittacophile. SciComm senior contributor at Forbes, former SciComm at Guardian. Also on Substack at 'Words About Birds'.

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