You've probably heard of a lemming before, but maybe just in context of a metaphor for someone so stupid they would follow a bunch of other people into a bad situation rather than think critically about their position and act according to their best judgment. Related keywords: lemming lemmings jumping lemming jumping lemmings misgiving misgivings lemmings jumping off a cliff cliff edge cliff edges cliffs edge cliffs edge going to your death bad choice bad. Lemmings are not impressionable people, however - they are actually a group of several species of small rodents native to the Arctic regions of the globe. Published in: New Yorker () Cartoonist: Bob Mankoff. They are stocky, short-tailed voles that burrow under the snow in winter, providing food for Arctic foxes and snowy owls, and spend the summer mating and eating mosses and grasses that aren't available in the winter. They migrate when food becomes scarce and can even swim across rivers and lakes when necessary. They also have the reputation for being extremely aggressive - rather than running away from a predator, they charge their attacker. They've even been known to attack humans studying lemmings. So, why would these little creatures, interested in preserving life and limb to the point that they would fight a human or a weasel rather than be eaten, also commit suicide? The truth is, their reputation for jumping off sea cliffs en masse is a myth. "This idea stems from the migrations observed in one lemming species: the Norwegian lemming," says Rolf Anker Ims, a researcher in the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology at the Arctic University of Norway, in an email interview. “It’s a complete urban legend.”-Thomas McDonough, Research Biologist at Alaska Department of Fish and Game."During the peak years of this species, a large number of individuals migrate out of their normal habitat and die in large numbers. In their search for food, they have been seen swimming across lakes en masse, and some have been observed drowning, but this far from mass suicide or intentional cliff-jumping. Depending on climate, predators, and food, a lemming population can increase by ten-fold over the winter season. They sometimes make enormous migrations looking for new food sources. As the thaw of spring comes, all of these lemmings can find themselves above ground, and with too many mouths to feed. While winter rages on, these rodents travel and copulate under the snow, expanding their populations. Figures jumping off a cliff like lemmings. Lemmings live in the tundra, where they build tunnels underground during long periods of snow. Find Jumping off cliff stock images in HD and millions of other royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and. The “ocean” they jumped into was even just a river! The Canadian Broadcast Corporation even found that the lemmings were made to run on a snow-covered lazy-susan to make their numbers look larger for the film. What we don’t see-just off frame-are the filmmakers pushing the lemmings off the cliff. “A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny.”-narration from White Wilderness. In the film, they show hundreds of lemmings spilling off a cliff into the ocean to drown. The film stages these lemmings in their march to death.
Rumor has it that the Walt Disney company paid a dollar per lemming to Inuit hunters to provide the rodents. The filming of these Norwegian lemmings, for example, was done in Alberta, Canada. The film’s depiction of lemmings, however, was steeped in deception.
Lemmings jumping off cliffs series#
Released in 1958, the film was part of a series of movies showing “true to life” depictions of animals in their natural environments. The lemming myth was popularized by none other than the Walt Disney Company in the Academy Award-winning nature documentary, White Wilderness. It has been suggested that it has to do with population. It’s not clear how or why this mass mania besets lemming colonies. The lemmings that survive the initial impact soon drown in the icy water as they swim out to sea. This idea of lemming behavior has become so prevalent that it’s fallen into popular jargon, where calling someone a lemming means they are unthinking and prone to join mass movements. Lemmings, as you probably have heard, sometimes jump off cliffs en masse, plunging into the ocean below.
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