CALHOUN'S EXPERIMENTS

• Calhoun wished to create a situation in which it would be possible to

observe the behavior of the rat colonies at any time.
• The experiments in the barn represented only the most recent phase
of a fourteen-year research program
• In March 1947, Calhoun initiated his studies of population dynamics
under natural conditions by introducing five pregnant wild Norway
rats into a quarter-acre outdoor pen.
• His observations covered twenty-eight months. Even with plenty of food
and no pressure from predation, the population never exceeded 200
individuals, and stabilized at 150.
• The difference between experiments carried out in the laboratory and
what happens to wild rats living under more natural conditions is
emphasized by these studies. Calhoun makes the point that in the twenty-
eight months covered by the study the five female rats could have
produced 50,000 progeny. Yet available space could not have
accommodated this number
• Calhoun discovered that even with 150 rats in a quarteracre pen, fighting
was so disruptive to normal maternal care that only a few of the young
survived.
• The rats were not randomly scattered throughout the area, but had
organized themselves into twelve or thirteen discrete local colonies of
a dozen rats each. He also noted that twelve rats is the maximum
number that can live harmoniously in a natural group

• Calhoun's experiments, however, dealt with large, reasonably

complex groups. By choosing subjects with a short life span, he was
able to correct a defect common to group behavior studies —that
they usually cover too little time, and thus fail to show the
accumulation effect of a given set of circumstances on several
generations.
Inside his Rockville barn, Calhoun built, three 10 by 14foot rooms open
to observation through 3 by 5-foot glass windows cut in the floor of the
hayloft. This arrangement permitted observers to have a complete view
of the lighted room at any time of the day or night without disturbing
the rat.
• “Sink" means a receptacle of foul or waste things.
• Calhoun invented the term "behavioral sink" to designate the gross distortions of
behavior which appeared among most of the rats in the Rockville barn.
• "behavioral sink" also means to describe the collapse in behavior which resulted from
overcrowding.
• Calhoun's observations revealed that when activity built up in the middle pens so that
the food hoppers were used from three to five times more frequently than the end pens,
the sink began to develop
• Courting and sex in the Norway rat normally involve a fixed sequence of events. Male
rats have to be able to make three basic distinctions in the selection of a mate.
• Both male and female rats participate in building, but the female does most of the work