Overpopulation warning
In July 1968, American ethnologist John B Calhoun built a "mouse utopia", a metal enclosure 9ft square with unlimited food, water and nesting material. He introduced four pairs of mice, and within a year they had multiplied to 620. But after that the society began to fall apart
— males became aggressive, females began neglecting their young, and the weaker mice were crowded to the centre of the pen, where resources were scarce. After 600 days the females stopped reproducing and the males withdrew from them entirely, and by January 1973 the whole colony was dead. Even when the population had returned to its former levels, the mice's behaviour had remained permanently changed. There were no predators in the mouse universe; the only adversity was confinement itself. Calhoun felt that his experiment held lessons as to the potential dangers of human overpopulation
Dad stories
When my dad first met my mom and asked her on a date he had a full 70s-style moustache. When he picked her up for their first date he no longer had a moustache. He told my mom that he just didn't like having facial hair anymore. In reality he had burnt it off the night before taking flaming shots of tequila. Love that guy.
Getting a pair of lambs up north
