They're not giant and looming, but the strong wind they provide actually blows away lighter animals into other passages and ducts where they can't be reached or even found. Even things like the fans used to provide air movement are taken into account. Rats of course, are also much smaller, lighter and make less noise than humans, which makes the trope more plausible in that respect as well. It's portrayed realistically with the rats spending over a week exploring the vents with a spool of thread before they know the way out well enough to escape. Air-Vent Passageway: The rats use the air vents to escape NIMH.think about that the next time you break out Mrs. Calhoun believed that the results of his studies on mice overpopulation directly predicted what would eventually happen with humans in an overpopulated world. Calhoun called these guys “the Beautiful Ones.” Eventually, the mice stopped reproducing entirely, and the mouse society came to an end. Dominant males retreated into themselves, preferring to spend their time eating, drinking, and grooming. Fighting and cannibalism broke out amongst non-dominant males. Males lost the ability to protect their females. Other mice wounded and even killed the babies. Mother mice kicked their babies out of the nest before the young were ready. By day 560, there were 2,200 mice crammed into that 9x9 space-and things got pretty ugly. The population doubled every couple of months, until it reached 620 mice on day 315. His most famous experiment placed four pairs of mice into a mouse universe he called “Universe 25,” a 9-foot-by-9-foot metal pen with tunnels, nesting boxes, and food and water dispensers. Calhoun spent the better part of a 40-year career working at the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, conducting various experiments and studies on mice to see what would happen when their population grew too big for their environment. Frisby’s quest after reading a study conducted by behavioral sciences researcher John Calhoun.ĭr. O’Brien, a journalist for National Geographic, was inspired to write the 1971 tale about Mrs. Frisby and the R ats of NIMH, which should actually be classified as a horror story. White, the idea of adorable, heroic rodents doing miniaturized versions of human things has enthralled generations of kids.

Rats by robert sullivan summary