![]() ![]() Due to this they had excellent fur coats, and were dubbed, somewhat disconcertingly, the "beautiful ones". The female counterparts of these isolated males withdrew as well. Some mice spent their days preening themselves, shunning mating, and never engaging in fighting. Later on, they would attack others in the same pattern. The withdrawn males would not respond during attacks, lying there immobile. "Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males." From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behavior elicit attack by territorial males," read the paper. "Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the center of the floor of the universe. The mice that found themself with no social role to fill – there are only so many head mouse roles, and the utopia was in no need of a Ratatouille-esque chef – became isolated. Here, the "excess" could not emigrate, for there was nowhere else to go. "The excess that find no social niches emigrate." "In the normal course of events in a natural ecological setting somewhat more young survive to maturity than are necessary to replace their dying or senescent established associates," Calhoun wrote in 1972. The mice split off into groups, and those that could not find a role in these groups found themselves with nowhere to go. When the population hit 620, that slowed to doubling around every 145 days, as the mouse society began to hit problems. About every 55 days, the population doubled as the mice filled the most desirable space within the pen, where access to the food tunnels was of ease. ![]() The experiment began, and as you'd expect, the mice used the time that would usually be wasted in foraging for food and shelter for having excessive amounts of sexual intercourse.
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