The Beautiful Ones Updated

2025 version

The ‘mad egghead’ who built a mouse utopia | Science | The Guardian

As he summarised his results, Calhoun again befuddled his audience, telling them of a class of mice that had appeared after the rodent population bomb had exploded and the population had rocketed. These were what Calhoun dubbed “the Beautiful Ones” – mice that spent their time grooming themselves and eating and shunned all social behaviour. The Beautiful Ones, Calhoun told his audience, were “capable only of the most simple behaviours compatible with physiological survival”. In time, Calhoun came to believe that if we didn’t act to stop a potential human population bomb from igniting, we would see human parallels.

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55 thoughts on “The Beautiful Ones Updated”

  1. Something a little different today from that Guardian link above and well worth thinking about:

    Standing before the Royal Society of Medicine in London on 22 June 1972, the ecologist turned psychologist John Bumpass Calhoun, the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, appeared a mild-mannered, smallish man, sporting a greying goatee. After what must surely have been one of the oddest opening remarks to the Royal Society in its storied 200-plus-year history – “I shall largely speak of mice,” Calhoun began, “but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution” – he spoke of a long-term experiment he was running on the effects of overcrowding and population crashes in mice.
    Members of the Royal Society were scratching their heads as Calhoun told them of Universe 25, a giant experimental setup he had built and which he described as “a utopian environment constructed for mice”.
    […]
    Why has Calhoun’s work not fared well in the world of academia? For one thing, after he published his Death Squared study, Calhoun rarely published his results in mainstream science journals, and, indeed, many of his studies, including those on Universes 33 and 34 – in which he examined whether cooperation reduced explosive rates of population growth in his rodents (it did) – were never published at all. Word of those studies would only have spread through people who heard Calhoun lecture about them or read a mention of them in a review paper Calhoun wrote in his later years.
    Calhoun’s sometimes glib use of anthropomorphic terminology has also hurt his standing in the world of science. Today, the sort of anthropomorphic language – “Beautiful Ones”, “universal autism”, “pied pipers”, “somnambulists”, and more – that Calhoun used to describe rodents, even in his most technical papers, is not just frowned upon but thought of as unprofessional, as well as dangerous. It’s difficult to imagine an editor of a major journal in animal behaviour, evolution or psychology allowing an author to describe extremely aggressive individuals as “berserk”, as Calhoun did. Anthropomorphism was frowned on at the time Calhoun was doing his experiments as well, but there was much more leeway. In a similar vein, while most scientists today and in Calhoun’s day would agree that behavioural and evolutionary work in nonhumans can inform our understanding of ourselves, the idea that a handful of studies in a small number of species could or should impact policy decisions is approached with much greater trepidation. But, in his papers and in his lectures, Calhoun would often slip into language that, at the very least, made it appear as if his policy recommendations did indeed stem largely from his work on two species of rodents.
    […]
    Some scientists retain vivid recollections of Calhoun, his work, and its long-term impact (or lack thereof). When Stephen Suomi, who moved into Calhoun’s space at NIMH, looks back on the body of Calhoun’s work, he’s most impressed by one thing: “He anticipated,” Suomi says, “the cross-disciplinary integration necessary to really study complex developmental problems.” Powerful praise, indeed, for Calhoun the thinker. Neil Greenberg, an animal behaviourist who, as a postdoc, overlapped briefly with Calhoun at NIMH in the 1970s, casts Calhoun’s work as the sort of material that gets undergraduate students excited about the study of behaviour. “I ended up using some of his research as gee-whiz kind of stuff for teaching,” he says today.
    Perhaps more than anything else, the reason references to Calhoun’s work on his rodent universes have plummeted in the scientific literature is because no evidence for the behavioural sinks, Beautiful Ones, or other observations that Calhoun detailed in his rat and mouse universes has been found in wild populations of animals – rat, mouse, or otherwise. Part of that is, no doubt, because for the past few decades, no one has been explicitly looking for these things when working in the field. But in the 70s and early 80s, most animal behaviourists in biology and psychology departments would have been familiar with Calhoun’s work, yet field studies then (and later) on population dynamics were not finding anything that resembled Calhoun’s conclusions.
    Unlike its fate in the academy and its technical journals, thanks not only to Catwoman, The Pump House Gang, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and the hundreds of newspaper articles that came out his work during his lifetime, but also to contemporary popular science articles, podcasts, and more, Calhoun’s work lives on in our collective consciousness and has remained a subject of fascination in popular culture. After all, how could the public not be endlessly fascinated with the US Senate discussing rodent utopias turned dystopias full of “Beautiful Ones” scampering about rodent apartment complexes? Or “pied piper” mice following around a researcher who told a collection of the best scientists in the world that his work may “sound like rantings of a mad egghead locked up in his ivory tower”, and who wanted to write a book called The Rodent Key to Human Survival?

  2. but we digress…

    The House Ethics Committee voted along party lines not to release their report on Trump’s pick for Attorney General, the President-elect announced he will nominate WWE executive Linda McMahon to run the Department of Education, Stephen takes a look at Dr. Oz’s history of medical quackery, and Jaguar released a ridiculous video to announce the luxury carmaker’s rebranding.

  3. Very interesting article, never heard of the rat guy. This paragraph got me thinking about the “pathological togetherness” of MAGAts and the “behavioural sink” where they’ve put us all (btw, British spelling irritates me):

    A “behavioural sink”, Calhoun argued, was an “attraction to one locality to assure a conditioned social contact”. That attraction could lead to a “pathological togetherness” in which animals needed to be near others, even if the consequences of such togetherness – eating at crowded feeders when more food could be obtained elsewhere – were negative. Once a behavioural sink was in place, “normal social organisation … ‘The establishment,’” he told the crowd, “breaks down, it ‘dies.’”

  4. Everybody joining me on my favorite hobby horse?  

    Global Population 18o0 – 1 Billion

    Global Population 1960 – 3 Billion

    Global Population 2024 – 8 Billion

    Animal populations have declined by 73% in just 50 years with extinctions in many groups.

  8. Wouldn’t it be awkward for a president-elect found liable for sexual assault and for paying off a woman for sex to have to withdraw the nomination of someone accused of sexual assault and another who paid for sex.

  9. craig, a little more about him, his work and what others say about the conclusions:

    Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? | Science History Institute

    [… examples not unlike what’s happening today…]

    Rodents have social hierarchies, with dominant alpha males controlling harems of females. Alphas establish dominance by fighting—wrestling and biting any challengers. Normally a mouse that loses a fight will scurry off to some distant nook to start over elsewhere.
    But in mouse utopia, the losing mice couldn’t escape. Calhoun called them “dropouts.” And because so few juveniles died, huge hordes of dropouts would gather in the center of the pen. They were full of cuts and ugly scars, and every so often huge brawls would break out—vicious free-for-alls of biting and clawing that served no obvious purpose. It was just senseless violence. (In earlier utopias involving rats, some dropouts turned to cannibalism.)
    Alpha males struggled, too. They kept their harems in private apartments, which they had to defend from challengers. But given how many mice survived to adulthood, there were always a dozen hotshots ready to fight. The alphas soon grew exhausted, and some stopped defending their apartments altogether.
    As a result, apartments with nursing females were regularly invaded by rogue males. The mothers fought back, but often to the detriment of their young. Many stressed-out mothers booted their pups from the nest early, before the pups were ready. A few even attacked their own young amid the violence or abandoned them while fleeing to different apartments, leaving the pups to die of neglect.

  11. No mouse stories here but I’ve always remembered this one about a gerbil.

    One day, my son brought a gerbil home to live with us. We put it in a cage. Some time later, the gerbil escaped. For the next six months, the animal ran frightened and wild through the house. So did we – chasing it.”There it is. Get it!” we’d scream, each time someone spotted the gerbil. I, or my son, would throw down whatever we were working on, race across the house, and lunge at the animal hoping to catch it.I worried about it, even when we didn’t see it. “This isn’t right,” I’d think. “I can’t have a gerbil running loose in the house. We’ve got to catch it. We’ve got to do something.”A small animal, the size of a mouse had the entire household in a tizzy.One day, while sitting in the living room, I watched the animal scurry across the hallway. In frenzy, I started to lunge at it, as I usually did, then I stopped myself.No, I said, I’m all done. If that animal wants to live in the nooks and crannies of this house, I’m going to let it. I’m done worrying about it. I’m done chasing it. It’s an irregular circumstance, but that’s just the way it’s going to have to be.I let the gerbil run past without reacting. I felt slightly uncomfortable with my new reaction – not reacting – but I stuck to it anyway.I got more comfortable with my new reaction – not reacting. Before long, I became downright peaceful with the situation. I had stopped fighting the gerbil. One afternoon, only weeks after I started practicing my new attitude, the gerbil ran by me, as it had so many times, and I barely glanced at it. The animal stopped in its tracks, turned around, and looked at me. I started to lunge at it. It started to run away. I relaxed.”Fine,” I said. “Do what you want.” And I meant it.One hour later, the gerbil came and stood by me, and waited. I gently picked it up and placed it in its cage, where it has lived happily ever since. The moral of the story? Don’t lunge at the gerbil. He’s already frightened, and chasing him just scares him more and makes us crazy.Detachment works.Today, I will be comfortable with my new reaction – not reacting. I will feel at peace.
    -Melody Beattie

     

  12. Keeping with the animal theme, here’s a joke (source unknown):
    A MAGAt got out the Christmas decorations.  He was setting up a nativity scene and threw out the Jews, Arabs, and foreigners.
    All that was left was one jackass and a bunch of sheep.

  18. “He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she wrote of Trump. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.”
    “For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/angela-merkel-donald-trumo-memoir-book-us-germany-politics-cdu-pope-francis/

  25. Well, It is kinda early to be a lame duck, but it seems to be true.  Is Trump going to learn the real meaning of checks and balances?
    One thing that Musk fails to realize is unlike his corporations, there are many rules to follow if you want to change the world. He will have to “cross every t and dot every i is he wants to change the world. I don’t think he has that much patience. So, I look for a lot of screaming and yelling and in the end he will take his ball and go home.
    I’m still in favor of letting Trump be Trump. The bastards voted him in they get what they deserve, I’m not fighting it any more I’m just making sure I protect me and mine. 
    Jack

  26. Jamie, 
    Maybe, but now we get the real appointments. Or maybe not, we just get some other unqualified crazy. This is what happens when you elect a senile president.
    Jack

  27. Gaetz is the first in tRUMPsky’s unemployment line.   Tens of thousands of government employees will be next.   
    Maybe they can be reemployed by Biden’s Infrastructure & Jobs Act…or is (F)Elon killing that, too?
     
    Unemployed folks don’t spend money, businesses lose customers and reduce staff, unemployment balloons and our economy pops.
     
    Christmas is coming and if those government employees are worried about their jobs, they won’t be spending much this year.

    Dumb Adolf is already ruining the economy and he hasn’t even put his hand on one of his hybrid-heretic bibles to lie  about upholding the US Constitution, again.  
     
     

  28. BiD
    It is not as easy to fire a federal employee as it is a twitter employee. There are rules and this isn’t the first time that a president has tried to give his flunkies good government jobs. Been there, done that, and we have a rule in place just for this problem. 
    Jack

  29. Gaetz should have served time by now for rape. Here in Ohio, every week men and a few women are sentenced to jail or prison for similar offenses.  Now he will just go off and get a high 6-figure salary somewhere and continue  his perversions.  I was taught the USA is a classless society, and India’s class system is evil and cruel. We were fed bullshit stew.  I would be happy not to ever see that Wolfman face of Gaetz again. Gaetz, now go get your shinebox!   

  30. bId – sfb shut down the government at Christmas time for about a month.  I enjoyed the every night is movie night (I have a lot of DVDs).  All was great until the marina lost power, then I went home.  Now the real question, will OPM actually “fire” fed employees without a fight? 

  32. BB – That shutdown in 2018 caused a loss of about $11 billion dollars.   Depending on personal finances, some may not have enjoyed so much time off.   Plus, it was just a shut down, not a purge.   

    ps – Good work on instigating a sit-in.

    Jack – Adolf doesn’t give a crap about rules & regs.  He doesn’t have to care since Congress and SCOTUS are teaming with MAGAts.

  34. Bid
    Right now we are stil a nation of laws and rules. He may think he doesn’t believe in rules but everybody underneath him has to believe or go to jail. As they explained to us when I worked for the juvenile court system. If you are following the law you have some immunity but if you are breaking the law all that goes out the window and your ass in hung out to dry. Good luck with getting Trump to give a damn.
    Jack

  35. Calling bs on MAGAt Mike Johnson and anyone else claiming scripture is anti-trans, and this guy also does a good job explaining gender, and the spectrum in biological sex.

    *

     

  36. Could this be right? A BlueSky user I am chatting with says about Gaetz, “As I understand it, he resigned from this session of congress. But since he was re-elected, he’ll be sworn in again in January. “

  37. Craig – Hadn’t thought about that. I was thinking he’d get moved to Rubio’s Senate seat by DiSantis. 

    His closing statement did say he would continue to help Adolf/Vance.

  38. BiD & Craig, either way he’s the proverbial (or should that be perverse) mole that keeps popping back up no matter how many whacks.  he might opt for a cushy 4 yr appointment that doesn’t require senate approval. plus if DOTUS wants he’ll be granted the necessary clearances for god knows what mischief. 

  39. easy shoe-in now for Todd Blanche who’s already on deck as presumptive deputy AG nominee.  senate approval won’t be much trouble (that is if there are no skeletons in the closet) considering his background according to wiki:

    Blanche was born in 1974 and grew up near Denver, Colorado. He went to a military boarding school in New Mexico and attended Beloit College. He then transferred to the American University School of Public Affairs, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and interdisciplinary studies. In 1999, Blanche worked as a paralegal for the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and attended night classes at Brooklyn Law School.

    After law school, Blanche was a prosecutor in New York’s Southern District and co-chief of its violent crimes unit and the White Plains, New York division. He worked on cases related to bank and wire fraud, public corruption, and racketeering. Blanche was later employed by the law firm WilmerHale. From September 2017 to April 2023, Blanche was a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. He represented clients including Igor Fruman and Paul Manafort during the latter’s 2016 fraud trial.

    Blanche left the firm and founded Blanche Law to represent former U.S. president Donald Trump. He is a defense attorney in the 2024 criminal trial of Donald Trump. Following Trump’s May 30, 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Blanche stated Trump’s defense team plans to appeal the verdict.

  40. Does everyone remember Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, whose medical specialty was identifying intersex infants.  She was forced from office for favoring distribution of contraceptives in schools.  All that direct honesty was too much for politics.

  41. Yes, Jamie, I remember her.  Not talking about contraception does not prevent teen pregnancies. 

  42. nor did her talking about the reality of intersex babies prevent disbelief of and hateful violence toward them as adults

  43. bId – that was a something I enjoyed because it gave me a break in several years of intense program development. At one point I was hospitalized with double pneumonia yet had a continuous stream of issues to handle.  But, I made sure that my young co-workers were with back up funds (whether they knew from who or not). 

  44. Interesting convo with a TX friend who is in her 80s, and she is Hispanic.  She doesn’t like Adolf, but voted for him because what little she saw of Harris left her with the impression that she was not a serious person.  She wasn’t watching the rallies like some of us here,  just late night TV and a few other interviews.   When it comes down to it, a lot of things she said sounded like misogyny.  

    She is very worried by what she’s seen Adolf doing already, but doesn’t think he’ll have as much power as he thinks he does, despite holding Congress and SCOTUS.   

    She also thinks there will be a citizens’ uprising if things get too bad.  She doesn’t think he’ll use the military on us, but thinks someone might actually try to take him out; she  thinks Butler was staged. 

    Anyway, just interesting to hear her take.  She’s very churchy and I assumed she’d vote Repug because of abortion, but that never came up.  She’s starting to have buyer’s remorse.

    BB – That was good of you to take care of your team, if needed.

  45. All that direct honesty was too much for politics.

    What really got Jocelyn Elders in trouble was telling kids it was okay to masturbate. 

  46. BID, Texas will be okay because Golden Boy Musk has claimed it for himself. It’s us in the Blue States that need to worry. He will turn his full fury. 

  47. Craig – But, if he is sworn in under as he was re-elected, or if DiSantis had him replace Rubio, the whole can of worms about him would be re-opened. 
    Congressman or not, I want to see the report. 

  48. I’m thinking Gaetz was a red herring all along. If he’d gotten through, fine. But an easy sacrifice in the event to protect the rest of the crop of ne’er do wells. The Senators won’t get by with that move again. 

  49. Craig – I think that is correct.  The important part is he has stated he will not be sworn in.  His resignation is to cover they session and the next.  The resignation is to leave his seat in this session, or left it. Separately he has stated, and his wife repeated that he will not be sworn in the next session.  His wife said he was done with federal service.  Now we know how much that means for magats and politicians, but it puts into action destantis getting an election started.

  50. Reading between the lines

    Gaetz, for his part, has only expressed an intent not to take the oath of office for the 119th Congress — which begins on Jan. 3, 2025, and for which Gaetz won reelection. He cannot preemptively resign from a session of Congress that has not yet convened or that he has not taken an oath to serve — that means he is still eligible to serve in the 119th although he cannot under any circumstances withdraw his resignation from the 118th to return to the lame duck session, according to House rules.
    The House clerk read a resignation letter from Gaetz on Nov. 14 — after President-elect Donald Trump named his as his attorney general pick — which read: “I hereby resign as a United States representative for Florida’s first congressional district, effective immediately. And I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump administration.”

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/matt-gaetz-return-congress-after-withdrawing-ag-pick/story?id=116108799

  54. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/19/texas-border-starr-county-ranch-trump-deportation/
    “The Texas General Land Office is offering President-elect Donald Trump a 1,400-acre Starr County ranch as a site to build detention centers for his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a letter the office sent him Tuesday.”
     
    “The state recently bought the land along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley and announced plans to build a border wall on it. The previous owner had not let the state construct a wall there and had “actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property,” according to the letter the GLO sent Trump.”
     
     

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