I once read a story in which the protagonist observes an experiment in which rats, held in a cage, are allowed to reproduce without restraint. When the population density among the rats crosses a certain threshold, the rats begin to kill and/or eat each other. This animal experiment is likened to human behavior by the characters in the story. The setting of the story was contemporary.
What is that story?
I read that story in the 1980s or early 90s. I thought it was by Stanislaw Lem, but haven't found anything there, yet.
The original (real life) experiments are these, I believe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Answer
There may be a number of stories fitting this description, it doesn't sound like an uncommon theme to me. Here is one possibility.
The Rodent Laboratory by Charles Platt.
It concerns a large experiment in an isolated research centre:
Harris stood on the catwalk in the darkened chamber, leaning against the railing, staring down into the brightly lit test area below him. The rats were in one of their more active states: brown shapes wriggled and scuttled over the thinly-sanded flooring. A group of them huddled round the feeding troughs, jostling for the best position. A male chased a female into one of the breeding hutches. A mother crouched in one corner of the enclosure, suckling young rats only two or three days old, baring her fangs at any intruder. The population had increased now to the point where there was no longer any room in the hutches for females to rear their young.
The test area is viewed from behind one-way glass:
On duty in the observation chamber that evening, Harris sat in the darkened room with Carter, watching and noting developments as they occurred. The silence in the place was overpowering. Under the one-way glass, the rats scuttled about, oblivious of the men watching in the darkened area above.
The rats indulge in cannabalism depite there being ample food.
"Some of the mothers have eaten their young straight after the birth..."
"Look," he said, suddenly animated, "the large one, there, by the feeding trough." As they watched, the large rat threw itself at a smaller one, dragging it by the neck, kicking up the sanded flooring. It bit viciously, and the smaller one twitched and lay still. The large rat eagerly seized its place at the trough.
"Interesting," he said. "That's been happening more and more often. Wait, now. Here come the scavengers." Thin, nervous-looking rats sidled up to the corpse of the victim and began dragging it away, chewing at it.
The experiment has parallels in the human world of the research establishment.
"You can tell me how I fit nine people into eight rooms. There are two new shorthand typists here, for report work, I suppose. There are several journalists from the science magazines, who'll have to stay overnight. More additions to the lab staff ... Philip, who's been bringing all these people here? We're overcrowded enough as it is."
Eventually:
The rats manage to establish some sort of hive mind and engineer their escape.
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