[HN Gopher] Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?
___________________________________________________________________
Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?
Author : xvmt
Score : 198 points
Date : 2022-06-28 07:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencehistory.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencehistory.org)
| onion2k wrote:
| The global population of Earth has pretty much doubled since July
| 1968 when the experiment was run. Evidently the fears of
| overpopulation they had were unfounded.
| adrianN wrote:
| A number of important ecosystems are now much closer to
| collapse than they were in the seventies. I don't think that we
| can say that fears of overpopulation were unfounded. The
| evidence is quite clear that we consume a large number of
| resources much faster than they replenish.
| noduerme wrote:
| Unless you consider that episodes of individual psychosis seem
| to have risen exponentially every decade since then..
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are numerous cases of individual psychosis associated
| with much lower population densities as well.
|
| _Wisconsin Death Trip_ is one reasonably well-known
| collection of such instances:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Death_Trip
|
| I'd be interested in knowing what the basis of your statement
| is, and how you're considering reporting / observation
| biases.
|
| (Note that I'm actually concerned with overpopulation and
| various psychological / sociological impacts of same. I'm
| simply highlighting that psychosis and antisocial behaviour
| is not exclusive to this particular population pattern.)
| harha wrote:
| I wouldn't say they're unfounded, humans just evolve more
| quickly to adapt through technology, giving access to
| previously inhabitable places. There's still a lot of these
| left though overall quality of life would get worse in terms of
| living space and better in other areas like medicine.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Hard to agree with this when faced with the overwhelming
| environmental degradation we see globally.
|
| Between extinctions 1000x the normal background rate,
| microplastics & chemicals poisining food supplies, climate
| change, oceanic accumulations of garbage twice the size of
| france and growing exponentially, growing water shortages,
| topsoil erosion, etc etc etc... it is not clear that those
| fears are unfounded.
| muzani wrote:
| Overpopulation hits places like India and Bangladesh badly.
| China and Europe's population actually seems to be declining
| and they seem to be quite well off.
|
| If you tweak the variables just a little, things change
| massively, so I think the article gets it right in saying that
| it's dangerous to draw conclusions. Even drawing conclusions
| from my previous paragraph.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >and Europe's population
|
| Where are you getting this from? Loads of countries are still
| rising in population, mostly due to immigration (birthrates
| of natives are below replacement rates).
|
| >and they seem to be quite well off.
|
| I wouldn't call Europe 'well off', unless your definition
| solely relies on "well, at least it is a developed country".
| We're facing multiple crises in several countries, and the
| younger generations are the ones most likely to pay the
| price.
| muzani wrote:
| A quick Google brings up this list:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-
| fer...
|
| I might have been mistaken in saying "Europe" as a whole
| but European countries are at the bottom of the list.
|
| It also seems that the bottom of the list has some
| economically struggling families, so this correlation could
| be mistaken. Fertility seems to be a lagging indicator - if
| someone can't afford a two bedroom apartment, they're just
| unlikely to have 5 kids.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Have a look at the graphs in https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Demography_of_the_Netherlands and notice how the growth
| percentage has only _just_ reached 0%, despite fertility
| rate having plunged all the way to near 1.5 _since the
| 1970s_. What 's more, many still predict population
| growths and the government is still stimulating it
| through subsidizing children and giving tax breaks to
| immigrants. The Netherlands is on the cusp of declining,
| but not declining yet.
|
| If you look up the history of fertility rates, most of
| developed Europe plunged similarly, yet population kept
| growing well up to now.
| muzani wrote:
| That's helpful. I always assumed that fertility rates
| linked to population growth, but forgot things like
| immigration.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > Europe's population
|
| The growth rate has certainly slowed in the last 30 years
| or so. From 0.98% in 1960 to 0.37% in 1990 and 0.12% in
| 2020. But, yes, it's still growing overall.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-
| popula...
| concordDance wrote:
| Note that this growth is not driven by the descendents of
| those people who were in the country in 1960, but by
| immigrants and immigration.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| But the consequences of too many young males and not enough
| females, are quite similar.
|
| _The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age,
| are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the
| imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in
| China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates
| certain property values, and parallels increases in violent
| crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of
| locations.
|
| Those consequences are not confined to China and India, but
| reach deep into their Asian neighbors and distort the economies
| of Europe and the Americas, as well. Barely recognized, the
| ramifications of too many men are only starting to come into
| sight.
|
| "In the future, there will be millions of men who can't marry,
| and that could pose a very big risk to society," warns Li
| Shuzhuo, a leading demographer at Xi'an Jiaotong University._
| tomrod wrote:
| I remember this reporting coming out over a decade ago.
|
| We are seeing tbe consequences of this in tons of ways, be it
| the rise of authoritarianism and incel culture, to region-
| specific issues for China/India.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Yes, the problem with comparing the study on mice to people
| is that mice iterate much quicker than humans.
|
| Generation time in (lab) mice is about 9-11 weeks, while in
| humans living in modern societies it takes between 20 and
| 30 years.
|
| To have actual consequences on society at large we need to
| wait _at least_ two generations, so obviously in such a
| long period of time people won 't notice the build up, like
| they do in the short time span it takes for mice.
|
| It happened with climate change too.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If we were half as many as we are today, we would need half as
| many resources as well. You can cut a cake in however many
| pieces you want, but eventually there won't be much to go
| around.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'll bet there's some kind of hysteresis in that. Things are
| rarely as nice in a company that has just reached 50 people
| vs one that has come down to 50 people.
|
| Same goes for a lot of orgs.
| ben_w wrote:
| Only in the sense that people are bad with numbers and
| timescales, and that the fears themselves directly led to
| funding for research that happened to be successful at creating
| affordable solutions.
|
| The fictional population of NYC in Soylent Green (released
| 1973, set in 2022) was 40 million, whereas the actual
| population today is 8.8 million, but even 40 million would give
| it about the population density of Manila today and wouldn't
| look like it was portrayed in the film.
|
| With sufficient industrial farming effort[0] and only existing
| technology, we could support something like 10 trillion on
| Earth, but if we did that then everything that wasn't a farm
| would look like the top of the Wikipedia list of highest
| density city districts.
|
| As for the correspondence between the rat experimental world
| and the human world, as the article itself says:
|
| > Given these wildly varying (even contradictory) readings,
| it's hard to escape the suspicion that personal and political
| views, rather than objective inquiry, are driving these
| critics' outlooks. And indeed, a closer look at the
| interpretations severely undermines them.
|
| Also, we aren't mice, so while we are doing various -- and in
| some cases, unhealthy -- things in response to our world of
| high abundance and low child mortality, we are doing different
| things, more slowly, and with the ability to discover and
| respond to the big picture.
|
| [0] the material requirements are on par with paraterraforming
| the Moon, because the first step is "make enough greenhouses
| for most of the land on the planet", _but it could be done_.
| NeoTar wrote:
| > The fictional population of NYC in Soylent Green (released
| 1973, set in 2022) was 40 million, whereas the actual
| population today is 8.8 million, but even 40 million would
| give it about the population density of Manila today and
| wouldn't look like it was portrayed in the film.
|
| Another example is Isaac Asimov's Trantor, a world-wide city
| enclosed with globes which requires the resources of multiple
| agricultural worlds to sustain it. It has a population of 45
| billion, and a surface area of approx. 40% that of Earth.
|
| Do the calculations, and the population density is, as
| Wikipedia says: "similar to the current population density of
| Germany or Connecticut. " I can't speak for Connecticut, but
| Germany certainly doesn't feel crowded. Even in central
| Berlin we have a huge amount of green space.
|
| Even Coruscant in Star Wars, with a population of 1 trillion
| people (1 000 000 000 000) has a population density less than
| New York City.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > It has a population of 45 billion, and a surface area of
| approx. 40% that of Earth.
|
| I think he retconned this up a bit in later stories, after
| people had pointed out the problem. But yeah, it's a
| weirdly common problem in science fiction; for whatever
| reason few authors bothered to check the density of
| existing cities before declaring a weirdly sparse world-
| city.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It's hard to take making sense of population numbers with
| the use of fictional material.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| You could explain away the discrepancy by saying that the
| 45 billion number is the number of permanent residents. As
| the seat of a galactic empire it would likely host
| representatives and their staff and families from tens of
| thousands of worlds, would probably be a hub of
| interstellar trade with many merchants and the crew of
| their ships staying for weeks at a time, a major tourist
| and religious hub with billions of visitors and pilgrims,
| countless numbers of galactic citizens would also make the
| journey to petition the emperor for various things. The
| list could go on for a mile and could result in a much
| larger effective population at any one time.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > In earlier utopias involving rats
|
| Well, there's a phrase you don't see much.
|
| This does feel like a kind of retro quasi-Malthusian concern
| these days, though. In practice, populations tend to stabilize as
| the economy develops, and the earth is now expected to hit peak
| population within decades.
| swayvil wrote:
| We can shift "peak population" forward by instituting
| progressively dystopian measures.
|
| "The city" is one such measure.
|
| We can also sacrifice quality of food, air...
|
| And imagine how many we could pack in if everybody stayed at
| home and played on their computer.
| rsynnott wrote:
| But I mean, the point is, we're _not_ shifting it forward. It
| is moving backwards (and smaller; most estimates are now for
| a peak of about 10bn, vs far more extravagant estimates in
| the past), closer to the present than would generally have
| been expected a few decades ago. In the 50s, many people
| didn't think there'd be a natural peak population at all;
| they were going with full Malthusianism.
|
| In practice, population growth tends to slow down and
| eventually reverse more or less naturally in advanced
| industrial economies.
| h2odragon wrote:
| One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to
| drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet
| snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire
| cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a
| bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast
| as possible. Dunk and done.
|
| One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I
| had been busy and it was usually my task); they'd put the cage in
| the sink and were gradually filling the basin with cold water,
| mice swimming and grasping each other and etc. Panic and horror.
| Nasty.
|
| Somehow, one mother mouse wound up on top of the pile, holding
| one almost weaned baby. As the water passed her knees she stood
| up and held the baby over her head. Prepared to die and use every
| moment left keeping the kid alive.
|
| I had to adopt her and her baby after seeing that. They were
| never exceptional as pet mice but I still feel good about saving
| those two.
| hanoz wrote:
| Why _hot_ water? I would have thought cold or preferably
| lukewarm water would be more humane.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Fast and doesn't damage the mouse as snake food. If the water
| is hot enough the shock kills them _very_ quickly.
| hanoz wrote:
| Hmmm, well, lukewarm for me anyway please.
| exolymph wrote:
| Dying quicker is better.
| hanoz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure pain features in the equation as well time.
| johnsimer wrote:
| Swap out the researchers with AGI/ASI robots and swap out the
| mice with humans, and you can see one of the many scenarios
| that cause people to be concerned about AGI safety.
| hackflip wrote:
| Almost all of science fiction is "what if aliens/robots did
| to us what we do to other animals".
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I had to adopt her and her baby after seeing that. They were
| never exceptional as pet mice but I still feel good about
| saving those two.
|
| Weird sentiment. It's like when South American paramilitaries
| would exterminate entire villages, but adopt one of the
| children. Does that make it easier to go back to killing them,
| or harder?
|
| edit: I could see it both ways; harder obviously, because you
| enjoy your pet and you see the other mice the same way you see
| your pet. But maybe easier, because that mouse _earned_ life by
| acting in a way you registered as humanlike compassion, and the
| others failed to, so deserve their fate.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| Alternate take: sometimes you perform whatever small act of
| grace that you can manage in this world, even if it's futile
| or inconsistent with your other actions.
| tharne wrote:
| Very well said
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What kind of hell prevented you from lashing out at this
| cruelty?
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| Fucking hell did I just read?
|
| I've just read Flowers for Algernon again a few weeks ago.
| Don't pull my heart strings like that.
| goda90 wrote:
| If this is such a common need, I can't help but think they
| should've invested in a controlled atmosphere killing setup to
| reduce the panic.[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation#Animal_
| ...
| h2odragon wrote:
| This was in 1986, in a pet shop. Not large scale enough for
| dedicated processing equipment, we used the same vacuum
| sealer for brine shrimp and crickets and mice and etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| Someone I knew caught a raccoon and tried to euthanize it in
| a _freezer_ which I quickly put a stop to and instead opened
| a CO2 bottle in the freezer which quietly put an end to the
| issue.
| [deleted]
| albrewer wrote:
| Why not suffocate them with nitrogen or co2 or something?
| Brybry wrote:
| Everyone agrees drowning is _really_ not humane but nitrogen
| isn 't approved either (rodents are not humans and so they
| might react to things like inert gas hypoxia differently).
|
| CO2 is common in labs though lab rats/mice do show aversion
| to CO2 which is interpreted to mean that it causes distress.
| So there's been ongoing debate for 20+ years over how humane
| CO2 is and what the correct flow rate should be and if oxygen
| should be added (or not) or other gasses (or not).[1]
|
| Something physical like direct concussion/blunt force trauma
| followed up by another method might be better[2] (needs more
| studying) but there's also issues with physical methods
| because they require more skill to do correctly (or
| tools/machines developed to negate the skill factor).
|
| Also operators dislike physical methods compared to
| gassing[1] so what's most practical might end up the
| standard[3] even if it may not be the most humane.
|
| I mean, theoretically if you could instantly crush a mouse,
| faster than brain/nerve signals can travel, that would be
| humane, right? But then a human has to deal with a gruesome
| crushed mouse.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035945/
|
| [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00236772221
| 097...
|
| [3] https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Guidelin
| es-...
| otherme123 wrote:
| 20 years ago I worked in a place that killed them with
| acetone, covering the mice with a lab paper then wetting
| the paper with about 50 ml acetone per 50 animals and
| closing the lid. It was fast.
| dymk wrote:
| $5 Home Depot bucket
|
| $189 nitrogen gas tank
| bell-cot wrote:
| Plus any regulatory, liability, etc. issues that go along
| with having & regularly using stuff that could also
| suffocate your employees.
| taylodl wrote:
| My daughter got an internship at a research lab this summer -
| where they have thousands and thousands of research mice and
| they kill several mice every day. She said CO2 works on
| adults and therefore that's what they use. But CO2 doesn't
| work on baby mice and is considered inhumane. Instead they
| use scissors and cut off the baby mice's heads. It's to be
| done swiftly so it's like a guillotine. The labs are
| continually monitored to ensure the animals are stressed as
| little as possible.
| themanmaran wrote:
| I'm curious why the CO2 doesn't work on the babies. Is
| their rate of breathing just much slower?
| posterboy wrote:
| > But CO2 doesn't work on baby mice and is considered
| inhumane.
|
| > Instead they use scissors and [swiftly]
|
| oh snap!
|
| Mice must have a high nervous conductance rate and as small
| as they are, what do you reckon how quickly it had to go
| through for there to be no impulse to speak of? (ask her!)
| verisimi wrote:
| > they use scissors and cut off the baby mice's heads. It's
| to be done swiftly so it's like a guillotine.
|
| Yes, that sounds fine. Much more humane. Carry on.
|
| As long as the ethics committee OKs it.
| shard wrote:
| It sounds like they had put some thought into which
| methods cause the least suffering. It doesn't sound like
| they were trying to skirt the edge of what the ethics
| committee would allow, which is how I read your comment.
| Please let me know if I have misinterpreted.
|
| As to possible alternative methods, those include
| freezing, which could be quite prolonged and painful, and
| blunt force trauma, which could be difficult/ambiguous to
| perform correctly and confirm correctness every time.
| verisimi wrote:
| Your assumption is that the mice must die.
|
| Given that its the case, you then wonder about the most
| effective means of killing them.
|
| But, pushing back on your assumption, what value can
| there possibly be in killing baby mice?
| drdeca wrote:
| Feeding snakes?
| verisimi wrote:
| at the research lab?
| albrewer wrote:
| Why not have research snakes? And a research mongoose to
| eat the research snakes? And research jackals to eat the
| research mongoose? And research lions to...
| shard wrote:
| Do you mean in general? There are two reasons given in
| this thread: medical research and pet (snake) food.
|
| I expect I don't need to explain why it's best to kill
| the mice humanely for medical research which involve
| dissection of some sort.
|
| For snake food, it's best to feed mice that have been
| euthanized. Feeding live mice is cruel to the mice, who
| experience terror right before death, and there is also
| the possibility that a struggling mice could injure the
| snake.
| taylodl wrote:
| Absolutely - this is a world-renowned medical research
| school and since they always have interns you can expect
| this question has been asked many, many times. They feel
| the need to explain it in their orientation because they
| know some of the students are going to be shocked by the
| procedure.
|
| My daughter did say it's done so fast and the mice are so
| accustomed to being handled there doesn't appear to be
| any fear on the mouse's part and there doesn't appear to
| be any suffering, let alone needless suffering.
|
| Funny anecdote - the first time she was in the lab when
| they were doing this she hadn't had breakfast that day
| and had a light dinner the night before and she fainted
| from low blood sugar. Took her a couple of days to
| convince them no, she was fine, she just let her blood
| sugar get too low.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| Once in grad school I went to a talk where another grad student
| was presenting on his fear research with mice. Many powerpoint
| details unfold of the hell he and his advisor had contrived to
| make the mice chronically afraid, and to be able to quantify
| the fear induced and its effects. I learned that when mice get
| scared enough they shit excessively. In the presentation of
| results he lingers on a graph, and says, for effect: "That's
| right, they were scared shitless."
|
| Hilarity. The room bubbles with laughter. Just enough
| transgression.
|
| I remember in that moment bubbling with rage. A famous and
| well-regarded paragon of the field [1] who had recently come to
| the university to give a talk spent his career characterizing
| animal emotions, especially of mice and rats. He revealed their
| rich emotional worlds in glorious detail. The presentor, his
| advisor, many of us in the department knew -- or should have --
| how un-funny the joke was. We were perfectly positioned to know
| it.
|
| Despite knowing what I knew, I didn't say anything. That
| silence is still among the top few of my regrets. I guess I
| learned the weight of doing the right thing in a packed room
| full of people with contrary opinions, and learned that I was
| way less strong / bold / principled than I had believed myself
| to be; which was remarkable, as that bar was already low.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaak_Panksepp
| weberer wrote:
| I don't get it. Are you angry that he performed those fear
| studies, or just that he made a joke about it in the
| presentation? If you see the importance of the results gained
| from the former, you should have no problem with the latter.
| Scientists need a way to cope with their emotions as well.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| I'm angry because if we agree that that work was important
| (not sure I do, but not the issue), then the sacrifice of
| basically torturing a bunch of animals to death in service
| of science should be treated soberly, with reverence. I'm
| kind of baffled that you think that I, or anyone, should
| have no problems with the described conduct.
|
| A surgeon, while operating with all diligence and
| conscientiousness, may from time to time kill a patient.
| That's life, it's table stakes to having surgery at all.
| The notion that it's cool if she jokes about killing the
| patient to "cope with her emotions" -- esp in an auditorium
| full of people -- is just fucking ... I dunno what to tell
| you if you think that.
| [deleted]
| redtexture wrote:
| Angry at himself for failing to publically point out and
| engage in discussion about the cruelty and terrorizing that
| was conducted, and well-understood by other science
| practitioners, and also the much of the audience present.
| tharne wrote:
| > That silence is still among the top few of my regrets.
|
| Don't be too hard on yourself. The fact that you remember the
| incident and feel that regret shows a lot of emotional
| maturity and self awareness. I doubt many others that
| attended the talk that day even remember it.
| starwind wrote:
| There have been a couple times where I've said something like
| "I'm sorry, I'm not seeing what's so funny here" when people
| are laughing about something serious. You can either look
| like a humorless dick or you people snap out of it and then
| respect you for acting like an adult
| gowld wrote:
| In a room full of people whose entire career is based on
| torturing animals?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is not uncommon for people whose work involve a lot of
| death and suffering to indulge in dark humor. It is not that
| they don't care, quite the opposite in fact.
| waserwill wrote:
| I've seen similar things. Besides many experiments not being
| remotely worth the harm they cause (poor design, niche topics
| without applications, dead end checking-all-the-boxes, etc.),
| they leave a mark on the people who conduct them. Some leave
| that sort of research out of distaste or disgust, and some
| become callous. It struck me that it inculcates an inhumane
| indifference to suffering. And numb scientists. It ultimately
| damages both the people and the science. Yet incentives
| (monetary, career progression) can push people past
| boundaries, and with time, erase them.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| I almost said something similar, the old Nietzsche quote
| about how if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares
| back. I didn't want to be even more dramatic, but I think
| you are exactly right. There's a cost to such things, and
| the externalities run deep and wide. All you can do is be
| very deliberate that the trade is worthwhile.
| Konohamaru wrote:
| Why would you agree to do such a job?
|
| "Because it's my job!" <- if someone paid you an obscene sum of
| money to bonk random people over the head with a baseball bat,
| would you take it? No? Then what's the justification for
| torturing mice?
| shard wrote:
| I hate to use this phrase, but I think this is what the kids
| are calling "dripping with privilege" these days.
| shlant wrote:
| what a rollercoaster of a story. Thank you for sharing.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I'm not vegan but I think about it all the time.
| badRNG wrote:
| Same boat.
|
| I'm not a vegan, and I try my absolute best to avoid thinking
| about what we put animals through. It certainly sits in a
| specific category of intrusive thoughts. The only real analog
| to this in my mind is being aware of my own mortality; I just
| avoid that thought and shove it out of my mind. Occasionally
| my comparatively relaxed life is harshly interrupted by an
| awareness of these facts and I'm ripped back to these
| realities for just a short, terrifying moment. Graciously, a
| distraction is always readily available.
| protonbob wrote:
| I am not a vegan but I think it would be useful for every
| meat eater to humanely kill and prepare an animal to eat at
| least once in their life. Having done so, I think I learned
| a lot about death and whether or not I was willing to eat
| an animal after preparing a few myself. I also think it is
| important to be aware of our own mortality and to think
| about it a healthy amount.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| I've thought about the mortality angle quite a bit, for
| the reasons you say, and can see how that would be useful
| -- even something as simple as fishing can force you to
| confront some realities about life and death and how we
| relate to the world. Did your behavior change after your
| experience?
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm "vegan", for some definition of the word.
|
| Candidly, I think that reduction in animal suffering is
| worthwhile, but you get diminishing returns quite quickly.
| I'd suggest only doing things that are easy.
|
| For example:
|
| - While grocery shopping you're choosing between two types
| of burgers with similar cost and enjoyment: pick the one
| that causes less suffering.
|
| - Your tires need to be replaced for a camping trip this
| weekend: don't stress about trying to find vegan tires.
|
| - You like cow milk and non-dairy milk the same amount:
| snag the one that you feel better about.
|
| - Your favorite crackers have some trace amount of milk
| powder in them and all of the alternatives suck. Buy them.
|
| Over time, the number of things that are "easy" will
| increase, and in my experience it's _way_ more practical
| than trying to engage in vegan perfectionism and googling
| things like "which cars are vegan" every time you need to
| buy something.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| I'm strictly vegetarian, I will not ever eat meat, but as
| for vegan parts this is my strategy and it works really
| well!
|
| it's pretty easy these days, too. veg foods are
| prolifically available, and oat milk is damn good, even
| in my morning cappuccino.
|
| it becomes something that is positive when it's always a
| minimization and hueristic rather than a ruleset and
| guilt-ridden.
|
| essentially, "I'm vegan but i don't stress it"
| tgarv wrote:
| Why try your absolute best to not think about it, instead
| of taking some steps to reduce your animal consumption and
| actually feel better about it? I get that something like
| mortality is an intrusive thought that you can do nothing
| about, but it's pretty easy to take steps to reduce meat
| consumption and actually feel better about it.
| gowld wrote:
| Ignoring suffering is much easier than relieving it.
|
| Caring about others isn't fun.
| Alop3x wrote:
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| The (famous) experiment seems to prove that mice are happy with
| the benefits of relatively high levels of social organization
| until the burdens of close quarter living and constant company
| drain them of their will to live and their ability to thrive. It
| amounts to a pretty strong argument for American style
| independence and personal liberty. The implication, I think, was
| that it was supposed to also endorse the laissez-faire economic
| system undergirding those things, even if only as a necessary
| evil. As a mammal who hates confined spaces, I can mostly get on
| board with that.
| ben_w wrote:
| As the article itself says, "Ultimately Calhoun's work
| functions like a Rorschach blot--people see what they want to
| see."
|
| Even if mice and humans really were the same, the article also
| demonstrates that there are many different hypotheses that fit
| _most_ of the observations, but all of them seem to be
| falsified by _some_ of the observations.
| adrianN wrote:
| The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young
| people are bad for social stability in a mice society. That
| amounts to a pretty strong argument against infant healthcare
| /s.
|
| I don't think we should generalize too much from mice to men.
| Deriving social policy from what works for mice seems like a
| very bold move to me.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number
| young people are bad for social stability in a mice society.
|
| For what it's worth: there _are_ strong indications
| suggesting a link between a large number of young, especially
| male, people and the emergence of social unrest [1][2][3].
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26271410
|
| [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/young-people-key-
| defu...
|
| [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03
| /an...
| RalfWausE wrote:
| ... and because of this, mankind has developed an
| interesting game called "war"...
| kipchak wrote:
| Though this creates a bit of a problem if you're no
| longer having wars.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There is a theory that precisely this is why Putin
| decided to try and take over Ukraine with most of the
| troops coming from piss poor regions of Russia. For
| Putin, it likely still is a win-win scenario: the fallen
| soldiers won't protest in their home regions and demand
| reforms, their families will worship them as heroes and
| even if the war fails in the end and only Crimea and
| Donbas get under Russian control [1], it will still have
| been worth the effort.
|
| [1] Note that I wish for Russia to be completely driven
| out of Ukraine and to be treated as a warmonger like
| Germany was after 1945, this is unfortunately not
| realistic.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You can't generalize too much, nor can you assume humans will
| just "fix it for everyone" like the author seems to imply we
| are some enlightened, higher species.
|
| That assumption can also backfire. A highly adaptive species
| capable of grouping up gives leeway for some _extreme_
| solutions which will solve the problem for a subpopulation at
| the cost of another. Humans might solve the problem, but not
| in the way which is best for the entire population. Plenty of
| examples in both the past and the present.
| Tepix wrote:
| A young populace is indeed closely linked to violence.
|
| The book "The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern
| World" by Paul Morland has some interesting thoughts on the
| topic.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43198718-the-human-tide
| tremon wrote:
| There's also the theory that humans caused the mammoths to
| go extinct not by hunting them to extinction directly, but
| by killing the adult males (because they have the largest
| tusks). Without a strong dominant presence to keep them in
| check, juveniles going through musth became so violent that
| they started killing each other and the females they
| pursued.
| hnbad wrote:
| The problem with that assertion is that it's so simplistic
| that it's meaningless.
|
| Having more young people doesn't magically cause more
| violence. Those young people don't exist in a vaccuum.
| Adolescents generally don't have an income and are thus
| dependent on their families to provide for them.
|
| Families having more children also means they have more
| expenses and need to allocate more time to parenting and
| "family time" for each child to still receive the same
| level of care. Additionally there are many economic and
| cultural factors why poorer people are more likely to have
| more children than wealthier families. Availability of
| contraception and abortion further exacerbates this. "More
| young people" generally means poor people having more kids.
| Even if the number of children increased equally across all
| economic categories, this would still mean more additional
| poor kids than more additonal rich kids because of the size
| of those groups (and because not-wealthy-but-not-poor
| families could end up poorer because of the additional
| expenses).
|
| But sure, young people cause violence.
| adrianN wrote:
| I find that sarcasm is always best when you can somewhat
| plausibly argue that it's serious.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I'm fascinated that you can get to this conclusion from the
| result of some kind of mice prison experiment
| sgt101 wrote:
| Even more fascinating is that the OP and several commenters
| don't seem to have read the article...
| doctor_eval wrote:
| (In mice)
| [deleted]
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| yellowapple wrote:
| > (Incidentally, after Universe 25's collapse, Calhoun began
| building new utopias to encourage creative behavior by keeping
| mice physically and mentally nourished. This research, in turn,
| inspired a children's book named after Calhoun's workplace--Mrs.
| Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, wherein a group of rats escape from
| a colony designed to stimulate their intelligence.)
|
| One of my favorite books growing up - and indeed among the very
| few I read voluntarily.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| It would seem like the more obvious lesson would be, "when in
| conditions very different from what that species evolved for, new
| and often serious problems will arise". Which is, no doubt, true
| and even relevant. But, since we evolved for conditions very
| different than rats did, I'm not sure how much more can be
| concluded.
|
| It does point out, though, the importance of being skeptical of
| any other scientific study done in rats, that hasn't been
| replicated with several other mammalian species. Or at least,
| skeptical of applying the "lessons learned" to humans.
| tonmoy wrote:
| What was surprising is that the mice didn't end up evolving
| some traits and instincts optimized for the new conditions. I
| would've thought they would learn new behavior after a few
| generations to thrive in the new environment. This makes me
| think that a post scarcity environment may not be enough to
| ensure the survival of a species
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Not sure, but it occurs to me that some lab animals have
| reduced genetic diversity compared to wild types of the same
| species. Sometimes this is by design, to reduce variation,
| sometimes just because the way the lab animals are bred
| happens to make a few of them the ancestors of the general
| population (especially if you're buying all your lab mice
| from the same place).
|
| So, they might have had a better chance of evolving behavior
| more optimized to the situation, if they had more genetic
| diversity to work with. Just an hypothesis.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is the fallacy of "what doesn't kill you makes you
| stronger". Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, adversity
| reduces strength rather than increasing it, especially if it
| happens too frequently and too severely. Evolution/adaptation
| works over long periods of gradual change, which is why the
| effort needed to survive, say, a global climate apocalypse
| varies widely based on whether the same amount of warming
| happens over 10 years, or 100 years, or 1000 years.
| tharne wrote:
| I don't have any firm conclusions on the meaning to be gleaned
| from Universe 25, but man, that article may have been the most
| interesting thing I've read in a while.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Has this ever been replicated? Were detailed enough records kept
| that we be sure this happened more or less as described or is it
| one of the famous experiments that were at best described in a
| completely misleading way, like the Zimnbardo Stanford prison
| experiment, or wildly and willfully misinterpreted, like the
| murder of Kitty Genovese?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Very good question.
|
| The Behavioural Sink Wikipedia page doesn't list any
| _independent_ replications, though Calhoun studied the
| phenomenon from 1947--1995, a period of 52 years.
|
| I'm going to emphasize _independent replication_ as having the
| same principle investigator study a question doesn 't meet that
| bar. The failure to replicate (or of Wikipedia to note any
| replication which might exist) is curious given the notoriety
| and significance of the Rat Utopia studies.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Surprising given that the cost to maintain such an experiment
| would be fairly low.
| bnralt wrote:
| You can add the Robber's Cave experiment and The Third Wave
| (which seems to be mostly fictional) to that list as well.
| After WWII, there seems to have been a certain desire among
| some people to show that the average human (or rodent, here)
| could quickly be turned evil given the right circumstances, and
| a number of charlatans popped up who were more than happy to
| manipulate things in order to feed this desire.
| gwern wrote:
| As it happens, there were some (now very obscure) attempts to
| replicate it. They failed. I cover (and jailbreak) them in my
| criticism of Mouse Utopia: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia
|
| OP is a bad writeup. He should be ashamed to write such an
| uncritical piece which says nothing you wouldn't find in either
| the Down The Rabbithole YouTube video (which seems to be
| patient zero for the resurrection of the Mouse Utopia myth) or
| the Wikipedia entry. The problem with Mouse Utopia is not that
| it has been interpreted in different ways by later pundits, but
| that it's probably bullshit to begin with. (How thoughtless do
| you have to be to note that it was the 25th experiment in a
| very long series of them before/after the behavioral sink
| experiment, and then not immediately wonder WTF happened in the
| >24 other experiments and then wonder why you can't find any
| information about any of them?)
| chaostheory wrote:
| Contrary to what most written accounts say about Calhoun's most
| famous experiment, he did not provide his mice with unlimited
| resources. The provided plenty of everything except for physical
| space. This article does a better job covering that angle where
| other articles barely mention the issue or describe the problems
| that stem from it.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Take a species that's got a high reproductive rate due to high
| infant mortality
|
| Jam them into a small enclosure that dramatically changes the
| infant mortality rate
|
| Watch with glee as overpopulation makes the ecosystem a toxic
| hell
|
| Great science /s
| dalbasal wrote:
| One of those topics where the meta is richer than the actual
| science. I remember my Dad mentioning as a child. The public
| interest is interesting in itself.
|
| Not the the science isn't interesting. Population/behavioural
| studies like this _are_ quite interesting. Animal behaviour is
| interesting, especially group behaviours where dynamics can play
| out.
|
| That said, what was he actually trying to learn? If you take the
| same colony, and manually removed a few hundred juveniles every
| week... that's basically a mouse farm.
|
| So, we know from both logic and evidence that "overpopulation" is
| a thing that occurs. Organisms multiply at exponential rates, and
| there must be hard limits on growth somewhere. Meanwhile, rodents
| as especially known for boom/bust cycles. Is it surprising that
| behaviour gets weird during "peak mouse" events? Mice aren't
| cannibalistic. The colony was protected from disease. Food didn't
| run out. Eventually, it's so crowded and everyone is stepping on
| one another. Breeding becomes unsuccessful, and that's the
| limiting factor.
|
| What's the alternative, that the cube becomes literally full of
| mice before crashing? That mouse society adopts a super slow
| breeding rate to stabilize populations. What happened was,
| ultimately, a compromise between these two.
|
| In any case, if the goal is analogy to humans... where's the
| work. If it's a scientific endeavour, how do we get from insights
| about mice to insights about people?
| xenadu02 wrote:
| We don't really know because Dr Calhoun didn't keep research
| notes or samples, published few scientific papers on his
| research, never captured or shared significant statistical
| data, had few controls and little regard for cofounds, and
| almost entirely failed to tell anyone anything about his other
| "universes".
|
| It also doesn't help that the two peer-reviewed studies that
| tried to replicate his results failed to do so. In many of
| those experiments the populations reached stable sizes, some
| without first experiencing a crash and others only after doing
| so. Some of the loosely-described "aberrant" behavior Calhoun
| claimed was never observed... not that we can be sure of that
| because Calhoun never gave us scientifically relevant
| observations of that behavior, only colloquial descriptions.
|
| It seems clear now Calhoun set out to achieve a specific result
| and worked hard to achieve it. Then people with an ideological
| axe to grind on all sides fill in the blanks to claim it proves
| their position.
|
| Calhoun for his part went to his grave claiming that mice/rat
| over-population experiments performed with inbred lab mice
| strains were in actual fact great models of human behavior and
| bemoaned that people didn't take his ideas seriously enough by
| rearchitect society to fit his conclusions.
| titzer wrote:
| > That said, what was he actually trying to learn?
|
| > So, we know from both logic and evidence
|
| Just wondering where evidence comes from, if not experiments?
| I, for one, find the results of the experiment surprising and
| useful instead of the "logic" and vague notions that we might
| come up with by theorizing.
|
| > how do we get from insights about mice to insights about
| people?
|
| Science is a whole lot of looking at, studying, and cataloging
| things, and the "insights about people" aren't necessarily the
| goal. Rather, that part seems so often biased to support a
| worldview, philosophy, or political agenda that I hope we leave
| it out more often!
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| It's interesting to me at least that the group's population
| crashed completely to zero and not to just a low number that
| then began climbing again. This is undoubtably a consequence of
| mice not being able to escape from the chaos due to the small
| size of the territory, but I do wonder what the minimum viable
| size would be to allow for a full boom-bust-boom cycle to
| occur.
| Someone wrote:
| But there wouldn't be chaos anymore by the time population
| dropped to a few hundred.
|
| Between the two moments of equal population something must
| have changed in the population, either genetically or, IMO
| more likely, culturally.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I don't think it's _that_ surprising, especially as an
| occasional result.
|
| Consider that surviving severe overpopulation is trauma.
| Survivors are physically and/or psychologically sick. They're
| not good breeders and at this point.
|
| Happens frequently in aquariums. Guppies breed like guppies.
| Overpopulate, then die back. The proximate causes can be
| varied. Maybe there's an ammonia spike, oxygen deficiency or
| other consequence of overabundance.
|
| When the "crash" happens, survivors tend to be a precocious
| bunch. They're past breeding prime, and probably injured by
| the events of the crash and its precedents. Starting a colony
| with "poor stock" is always more difficult, and that's what
| you now have.
|
| It doesn't have to be overpopulation that causes a crash. Say
| you accidentally pollute the water with soapy hands. Some
| fish will die today. Some tomorrow. Dead fish rotting is also
| polluting. Fish surviving the ordeal will probably have
| reduced lifespans and breeding potential.
|
| My unqualified guess is that most extirpation _events_ leave
| survivors, usually in less than ideal shape. The technical
| extirpation happens later, as survivors gradually drop off
| without successful reproduction.
|
| Good question about minimum population size for boom/bust
| cycles to occur. I suspect this is more about environmental
| richness than pure numbers. Some predation probably
| stabilizes things, and some boom/bust might be possible. If
| you had multiple colonies connected by 500m of tubing, this
| "distance" between territories might allow for "local" booms
| and busts to occur.
| generalizations wrote:
| > If you had multiple colonies connected by 500m of tubing,
| this "distance" between territories might allow for "local"
| booms and busts to occur.
|
| I was thinking the same thing. From the article I got the
| impression that the final collapse happened because all the
| survivors were the same age, and too old to spawn a new
| generation. Semi-separation would at least break the
| synchronization.
| shard wrote:
| > Consider that surviving severe overpopulation is trauma
|
| Recently there was an article posted on HN about how trauma
| experienced by parents are passed down to children through
| (a term that means it's related to activation of genes, I
| believe, but not DNA itself... I thought it was
| metagenomics but upon looking at the definition I don't
| think that's it). Perhaps the trauma of overpopulation
| activated or deactivated some genes which in turn reduced
| reproduction rate in offspring.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Word you're looking for is probably "epigenetic".
| shard wrote:
| Thank you! Now not being able to think of this word
| doesn't have to bug me for the rest of the day...
| gwern wrote:
| The population _didn 't_ crash to zero, Calhoun merely
| claimed it was going to. But despite researching it for
| decades while being well-funded, what wound up happening (in
| that, as in almost all of the mouse experiments) remains a
| mystery because Calhoun published bizarrely little.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| swayvil wrote:
| Who are our "beautiful ones" I wonder. The asexual compulsive
| groomers.
|
| Grooming could be the mouse equivalent of entertainment. Movies
| and videogames and such.
| kipchak wrote:
| NEET is the term I see most commonly with some variation.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Hikikomori: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
| nickdothutton wrote:
| If I was to start a social network I'd call it Universe 25. Maybe
| shorten to u25.
| goatcode wrote:
| Ever since learning of the Mouse Utopia (where did "mouse
| 'heaven'" come from?) experiment, I found it interesting that its
| results spoke more directly of LOCALIZED overpopulation. In a
| human context: cities. Many of the pathologies observed in the
| experiment are very starkly displayed in human cities. I've
| always found it odd that those most interested with
| overpopulation concerns also advocate for cities as part of a way
| to solve the issue, when they really only exacerbate the problem.
| zwkrt wrote:
| I guess its thinking of overpopulation as a phenomenological
| effect on the individual vs the global effect of all of us on
| the environment. Interesting point though, I had never thought
| of it in that way before. People all over the world are already
| living in Blade Runner levels of density.
| [deleted]
| bannedbybros wrote:
| sam36 wrote:
| Funny, people had been posting the "John Calhoun rodent
| experiment" meme on 4chan for the last year or so. Guess someone
| took notice.
| [deleted]
| mlatu wrote:
| i think this shows only that social species' behaviours are fine
| tuned to the environment they have evolved in and drastically
| changing said environment requires the species to adapt in order
| to survive.
|
| i feel like there should be a pen size above which such an
| experiment might run indefinetly. but my gut tells me: no matter
| the size, it will always eventually crash and burn because mice
| can't "talk it out"
|
| i think the only possible lesson here is: if you send a
| generation ship to alpha centauri, you better make sure they all
| have at least one common language.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"i think the only possible lesson here is: if you send a
| generation ship to alpha centauri, you better make sure they
| all have at least one common language."
|
| I suspect that if a generation ship wasn't launched with a
| monolinguistic population a Creole would rapidly develop and
| the end result would be a new common language.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Humans are more adaptable even without explicit communication.
| We seem to vary our reproduction rate based on the life
| expectancy of our offspring. Lots of children during and
| shortly after war, or when child mortality is high, but much
| fewer when it's near certain that our offspring will live to
| old age.
|
| Though we have some other problems like tribalism that might be
| down to the environment we evolved in, and not having a common
| language would make those a lot worse.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| > We seem to vary our reproduction rate based on the life
| expectancy of our offspring
|
| I don't think the life expectancy of the offspring is the
| only factor. Birth control certainly contributes, education
| is known to as well, wealth, working status and legal
| equality of women, and now there seems to be a whole new set
| of influences on the younger generations. It also doesn't
| seem to be a finely tuned feedback system, if anything it
| seems closer to the messy outcome of Universe 25 where
| reproduction broke down due to poor socialization and rearing
| and an overabundance of stressors.
| wongarsu wrote:
| You are right that there are certainly countless factors,
| and it's a messy system. You can clearly see economic
| troubles suppressing birth numbers, or the introduction of
| the pill that drove most Western societies to a birth rate
| below the replacement level. You can also see clear
| differences caused by politics/ideological systems. But the
| coupling between birth rate and death rate seems the
| strongest overall predictor, with the lag between the two
| driving many population booms. As a consequence, Western
| nations saw the biggest decline in birth rates in the
| beginning of the 20th century [1]
|
| 1: https://i.imgur.com/jhyvMWX.png
| shard wrote:
| I always thought effects such as environmental chemical
| pollution (estrogen analogs), overreliance on nighttime
| lighting / artificial temperature regulation and dietary
| issues leading to obesity (both previous items reducing
| fertility), and increasing cost of raising children
| (leading to higher investment in fewer children) are some
| of the main factors leading to decreases in birth rate in
| developed nations.
| Tepix wrote:
| Related:
|
| The book "Heaven's River" by Dennis E. Taylor (part 4 of the
| bobiverse series) contains an interesting Utopia, similar to a
| generation ship.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42950440-heaven-s-river
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I really enjoy this series. I feel like it is one of the few
| stories that really explores what it would like to be an
| uploaded mind without a significant amount of handwaving.
| There's still some sci-fi elements to it but they seem
| believable.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I was following that until the language thing. How does
| talking, make more room?
| cdot2 wrote:
| It doesn't make more room but it would help people develop a
| society that adjusts for the new environment.
| HPsquared wrote:
| One half of the mice could talk among themselves and go to
| war with the other half, perhaps.
| mlatu wrote:
| when was the last time you had to fight with someone using
| just words and how do you think would that interaction have
| been if you and your counterpart had not used words but
| teeth, fists and fingernails instead?
|
| assuming you had the same standing to each other prior to the
| fight, would you two be able to interact the same afterwards,
| regardless who won?
|
| it doesnt make more room, but it allows for compromises
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Humans haven't had a good track record. I don't imagine
| mice would do any better.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Humans have a poor track record compared to what? An
| ideal zero-conflict state? Sure. Animals that kill each
| other because they cross paths during breeding season?
| Not at all. Compared to them, we are masters of
| negotiation and compromise.
| mhb wrote:
| Mouse armor: https://www.boredpanda.com/cat-mice-armor-jeff-de-
| boer
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> a 41/2-foot cube--with everything a mouse could ever desire
|
| They likely desired a larger cube.
| generalizations wrote:
| There were only 8 mice in that cube when the experiment
| started. Seems like that would be more than enough space for
| them. That the mice overfilled their living space through
| reproduction is not a limitation of the experiment, but an
| outcome.
| oh-4-fucks-sake wrote:
| One step further: they _needed_ a larger cube. Seems like the
| study reasoned that providing unlimited food /water ruled out
| "resource scarcity" as a cause for decline. Space is very much
| a resource.
|
| It's no different than the naive reasoning around government-
| run housing projects: "You have food, water, and a tiny space
| to live crammed among 1000s of other people--what more could
| you need"? Didn't this spawn aberrant, violent, unhealthy
| behavior too? Wasn't (at least in theory) part of the solution
| to stop doing ultra-ultra-high-density housing? (Given, it's
| not like the government executed on re-housing all the project-
| tenants into lower-density housing--they often simply dumped
| them back into the streets.)
|
| TL;DR: It's mostly obvious why ultra-high-density projects (and
| prisons, and concentration camps, and slums) set people up for
| failure; 256 tiny nests in a 4.5ft cube sounds a whole like a
| housing project.
| nephrite wrote:
| So it wasn't an utopia. The mice had enough water and food, but
| they ran out of living space. It's so obvious I can't understand
| nobody pointed it out yet.
| cdot2 wrote:
| I think the point is that the population would continue to grow
| until they run out of living space and go extinct regardless of
| the exact size of the experiment.
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's the ever-so-remote possibility that this was precisely
| the point:
|
| _But the thing is, this wasn't Calhoun's first rodent utopia.
| This was the 25th iteration. And by this point he knew how
| quickly mouse heaven could deteriorate into mouse hell._
|
| From TFA.
| jquery wrote:
| Feels like after the 3rd iteration you could call Calhoun a
| sadist.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Surprisingly, this is the best article thus far in pointing out
| the issues arising from a lack of space. This is the only
| article that seems to even address the lack of space.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| there's never gonna be "enough space" for animals that do not
| understand the concept of overcrowding and planned parenthood.
|
| That's the point of the experiment: in a food rich environment
| with no predators and no diseases, without human intervention
| (or intelligent planning if you prefer) everything is gonna
| deteriorate to the point of no return.
|
| Nature is all about balance and we humans do nothing to follow
| that predicament, so if we are not careful and let things go by
| themselves, we risk of giving birth to hell on Earth.
|
| Take the Yellowstone example.
|
| Yellowstone is not a small and confined space and yet when
| wolves disappeared, herbivores, moose in particular, started
| growing in number exponentially, posing a threat to the
| ecosystem because, with no predators around, young moose could
| freely walk all over the park and started eating too-young
| trees, basically preventing them from growing.
|
| Then wolves were re-introduced, and even though it's still
| unclear if the damages caused by moose can be undone, they at
| least stopped things from getting worse, cause wolves mainly
| prey on moose.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/yellowsto...
| raldi wrote:
| Real Mouse Heaven would've included a big Burning Man camp to
| work on so they'd have something to do all year.
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