One in a series of posts dedicated to pop-culture depictions of mice — as symbolic representations of abject other, rebellious scamp, intrepid explorer, scrappy survivor, resourceful collaborator, and habitat experimenter — from 1904–2003.

In 1968, a biologist working at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) built the Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice — a large pen with everything a mouse could desire: plenty of food and water, a perfect climate, reams of paper to make cozy nests, and 256 separate apartments.

Architects and civil engineers at the time were having vigorous debates about how to build better cities, and Calhoun imagined urban design might be studied in rodents first and then extrapolated to human beings.

But maladjusted behavior began to spread like a contagion from mouse to mouse. The biologist dubbed this phenomenon “the behavioral sink.” Within five years, all the mice had died.

This interesting article reviews the various lessons that people have attempted to draw from the experiment — conservative, progressive — and debunks most of them. Also see this essay in Cabinet.

Robert C. O’Brien’s 1971 children’s science-fiction adventure Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH imagines what might have happened if a group of super-intelligent rats (and one mouse) had escaped from NIMH and founded a high-tech commune underneath a farmer’s rosebush.

That alone would have made a good story… but by making the rats of NIMH’s tale secondary to the desperate struggle of a courageous mouse, Mrs. Frisby, to save her family from the farmer’s plow, O’Brien wrote one of the best kids’ books ever. (Winner of the 1972 Newbery Medal.)

In addition to the rats’ fascinating society, we encounter a charismatic crow, a sinister cat, and an even more sinister group of scientists posing as rat exterminators. An adult reading the book will be struck by the philosophical debate, among the rats, about the commune’s lack of self-sufficiency. Should they retreat from human society and create a truly independent utopia, albeit one lacking in creature comforts? They must decide before the NIMH rat catchers poison their habitat!