John B. Calhoun

John Bumpass Calhoun (May 11, 1917 – September 7, 1995) was an American ethologist and behavioral researcher noted for his studies of population density and its effects on behavior.

He claimed that the bleak effects of overpopulation on rodents were a grim model for the future of the human race.

During his studies, Calhoun coined the term "behavioral sink" to describe aberrant behaviors in overcrowded population density situations and "beautiful ones" to describe passive individuals who withdrew from all social interaction.

His work gained world recognition.

He spoke at conferences around the world and his opinion was sought by groups as diverse as NASA and the District of Columbia's Panel on overcrowding in local jails.

John Calhoun was born May 11, 1917, in Elkton, Tennessee, the third child of James Calhoun and Fern Madole Calhoun.

Their first child died in infancy.

Calhoun had three siblings: an older sister, Polly; and two younger brothers, Billy and Dan.

His father was a high school principal who rose to a position in administration in the Tennessee Department of Education.

His mother was an artist.

Calhoun's family moved from Elkton to Brownsville, Tennessee, and finally to Nashville, when Calhoun was in junior high school.

At this time, Calhoun began attending meetings of the Tennessee Ornithological Society.

Mrs. Laskey, distinguished for her work in bird banding and in the study of the chimney swift, was a pivotal influence on his developing interest in birds and bird habits.

Calhoun spent his junior high and high school years banding birds and recording the habits of birds.

His first published article was in The Migrant, the journal of the Tennessee Ornithological Society when he was 15 years old.

Despite his father's refusal to help him attend an out-of-state university, Calhoun made his way to the University of Virginia where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1939.

During the summers, he worked for Alexander Wetmore, head of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., doing ornithology work.

He then earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1942 and 1943.

The subject of his thesis was the 24-hour rhythms of the Norway rat.

Calhoun met his future wife, Edith Gressley, at Northwestern, where she was a biology major and a student in one of his classes.

After graduating from Northwestern, he taught at Emory University and Ohio State University.

In 1946, he and his wife, Edith, moved to Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore.

Calhoun worked on the Rodent Ecology Project at Johns Hopkins University.

In March 1947, he began a 28-month study of a colony of Norway rats in a 10000 sqft outdoor pen.

Even though five females over this time-span could theoretically produce 5,000 healthy progeny for this size pen, Calhoun found that the population never exceeded 200 individuals, and stabilized at 150.

Moreover, the rats were not randomly scattered throughout the pen area, but had organized themselves into twelve or thirteen local colonies of a dozen rats each.

He noted that twelve rats is the maximum number that can live harmoniously in a natural group, beyond which stress and psychological effects function as group break-up forces.

While posted at Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor, Maine, Calhoun continued studying the Norway rat colony until 1951.

While in Bar Harbor, his first daughter, Cat Calhoun, was born.

The family lived in the guesthouse on the Luquer estate.

In 1951, Calhoun and family moved back to Silver Spring, Maryland.

He worked for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the division of neuropsychiatry before gaining his position at the National Institutes of Health in 1954 where he worked for the next 33 years.

1954 was also the year his second daughter, Cheshire Calhoun, was born.

Calhoun pursued his experiments in behavior, using domesticated Norway rats, at his lab on the second floor of a huge barn on the Casey farm in the country outside Rockville, MD.

The area is now a suburban center but the barn still stands, renovated for suburban usage.

In the days of Calhoun's occupancy there was a small, cluttered office area at the top of the stairs.

The rodent odor was overpowering, and it took some time before one could breathe normally.

The research area was divided into three parts.

In the center section a box-like room was built.

Calhoun's rat studies were used as a basis in the development of Edward T. Hall's 1966 proxemics theories.