It's important never to overgeneralize from infrahuman animal studies to human behavior.

However, with caution, some studies, especially of mammals, may help us gain perspective on some human issues.

Studies of mammal overpopulation may prove relevant to the development of specific human societal trends.

Where there are more people, there will be more crime. This isn't necessarily the case per capita; that depends significantly on context. In the United States, there tends to be more violent crime per capita in cities than in rural areas, but there are regional exceptions and that trend is not always followed internationally. So, what can we learn, forensically, about the effects of crowding on violent or otherwise undesirable behavior?

Although it's very dangerous to draw firm conclusions about humans from studies of infrahuman animals, it might be worth looking, at least from a heuristic standpoint, at what we know about other kinds of mammals when you crowd them together.

Nearly a century ago, Sir Solly Zuckerman examined the behavior of Hamadryas baboons, crowded together in an exhibit colony at London Zoo. The conditions were hardly natural; the baboons, of course, couldn't get out, and the male-to-female ratio was over fifteen to one. These facts have been used to demonstrate the limitations of this early research; but the fact remains that under these crowded and unnatural conditions, the baboons beat the living hell out of each other, with a tremendous casualty rate that has never been seen for baboons in the wild. Zuckerman's findings, sadly, were extended far beyond their actual scope; the unnaturally crowded conditions definitely influenced the results (Jolly, 1972).

But at that point, the forensic psychologist, frequently not the least cynical of scholars, might ask how “natural” are conditions in modern Manhattan, or Fresno, or........

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