Role of physical injury in the physiological effects of population density in mice.

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Abstract
Increases in open-field activity and organ weight change associated with expanding population size leave open the question of regulators. When 80 male mice derived from random crosses of 5 inbred strains were housed in populations of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 for 1 wk., fighting and wounding paralleled increase in population size and were associated with increases in open-field activity and variations in organ weights. Number of body wounds was the better indicator of behavioral and physiological change than population per se; body wounds correlated significantly with activity (r = .26) and spleen weight (r = .52). Submissive wounded animals were higher in activity than dominant nonwounded animals (p < .005).

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