{"ID":2883035,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08587","arxiv_id":"2508.08587","title":"Hierarchy Entropy Degeneration Explains the Rat Utopia Population Collapse: The Role of Full Visibility and Isolation","abstract":"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.","short_abstract":"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...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08587","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.08587v1","authors":"[\"Alexander V. Mantzaris\"]","published":"2025-08-12T03:00:20Z","proceeding":"q-bio.PE","tasks":"[\"q-bio.PE\",\"cs.MA\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}