In the absence of predators and environmental adversities the mice began to multiply. After a period of initial adjustment, the population began to increase exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Soon, however, the high fecundity rate started to have an adverse impact on the mouse world. As more and more young were born, all social niches came to be occupied. Prevented from finding a territory of their own, excess mice had to contest for roles inside an overcrowded system. Males who failed to assert dominance over their territory began to withdraw from social interaction. They would congregate in large groups near the middle of the pen, and exhibit atavistic behavior. Long periods of inactivity were typically interrupted by bouts of violence, in which withdrawn males would viciously maul one another. Constantly called upon to defend their territory, dominant males were also under undue stress. Gradually they too began to waver in their dominance, leaving nursing females exposed to nest invasion. The females, in turn, started to prematurely wean, abandon, or even cannibalize their young.
As more and more mice were not properly socialized, mouse society started to break down. Mortality rates began to soar. Rejected by their progenitors, the surviving young were not socialized either. Some females began to withdraw to upper nests while their male counterparts isolated themselves and refused to engage in courtship or territorial fighting. Calhoun called this group “the beautiful ones”: their behavior restricted to eating, sleeping, and grooming, they exhibited an impeccable pelage. By day 600, as the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its numbers began to dwindle back to those in the initials stages. There would be no recovery however. Though physically able to reproduce, the mice had lost the social skills required to mate. Calhoun concluded the colony had experienced a “social death” long before its ultimate physical extinction and published the experiment’s results in an article titled “Death Squared.1” As Calhoun candidly admits in his introduction, however, he was not solely concerned with mice. His thoughts were on man, and on how the death of the spirit, under certain conditions, precedes the death of the body. “Death Squared” opens by quoting the Book of Revelation2 and ends with an ominous warning.3 Calhoun’s description of his mice colony also lent itself readily to anthropomorphization: societal dropouts, welfare moochers, delinquent youth, feckless single mothers, and socialites warped in narcissism.