Hierarchy Entropy Degeneration Explains the Rat Utopia Population Collapse: The Role of Full Visibility and Isolation
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866916892647620608 |
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| author | Mantzaris, Alexander V. |
| author_facet | Mantzaris, Alexander V. |
| contents | Calhoun's Rat Utopia experiments demonstrated a puzzling population trajectory: initial growth, plateau, and eventually a total collapse of the rat population despite abundant resources. This paper proposes a hypothesis that the enclosure's design enabled full visibility of the social hierarchy (pecking order), leading to entropy degeneration: progressive loss of uncertainty in rats' perceived ranks over generations. High initial uncertainty drives engagement in dominance, reproduction, and care; as visibility solidifies the hierarchy over the generations, uncertainty vanishes, nullifying perceived gains from social activities. Simulations reproduce the experimental arc which rely on a game theoretic matrix that is parameterized by the uncertainty (entropy) in the hierarchy which changes over rat generations. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_08587 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Hierarchy Entropy Degeneration Explains the Rat Utopia Population Collapse: The Role of Full Visibility and Isolation Mantzaris, Alexander V. Populations and Evolution Multiagent Systems 92D25, 91A80, 91A10 I.2.11; I.6.5 Calhoun's Rat Utopia experiments demonstrated a puzzling population trajectory: initial growth, plateau, and eventually a total collapse of the rat population despite abundant resources. This paper proposes a hypothesis that the enclosure's design enabled full visibility of the social hierarchy (pecking order), leading to entropy degeneration: progressive loss of uncertainty in rats' perceived ranks over generations. High initial uncertainty drives engagement in dominance, reproduction, and care; as visibility solidifies the hierarchy over the generations, uncertainty vanishes, nullifying perceived gains from social activities. Simulations reproduce the experimental arc which rely on a game theoretic matrix that is parameterized by the uncertainty (entropy) in the hierarchy which changes over rat generations. |
| title | Hierarchy Entropy Degeneration Explains the Rat Utopia Population Collapse: The Role of Full Visibility and Isolation |
| topic | Populations and Evolution Multiagent Systems 92D25, 91A80, 91A10 I.2.11; I.6.5 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08587 |