1. Only one repetition of the experiment, and taken as infallible “Gospel”.
2. Amazing how this fed into the Malthusian hysteria of its day (complete with hockey stick graph), “The Population Bomb.” It was an experiment that “proved” all of those hysterical in the minds of “science.”
3. Strangely, as I think this notes, we really don’t see this playing out in nature. Predators appear. Fertility declines (as I assume so does mating urges) as resources grow sparse. Diseases emerge. In short, nature takes care of business eventually long before resources go to zero.
Overpopulation was not the problem in this experiment. The cage was not full, there was room, water and food for more animals.
It’s that the animals always got whatever they needed without having to learn to make it on their own.
People other than the original experimenter came to the incorrect conclusions, conclusions they wanted to see and not what was taught by the experiment.
About the experiment: I worked at a place nicknamed “Mousewitz” when young. The experiment was repeated with the deer mouse Peromyscus leucopus. This is one of North America’s native mice.
The professor I worked for found the same thing. There was no overpopulation with this species. The original experiment was performed on old-world mice, Mus Musculus.
My job was to remove the organs, weigh them, preserve them in formaldehyde and embed them for microscopy.
As I recall the professor thought the problem was overstimulation that resulted in excess stress and withdrawal.
I specifically remember having to remove adrenal glands where the stress hormone cortisol was made.