For the 1958 Disney nature film White Wilderness, filmmakers eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras were rolling. Over the past century, the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture.īut the biggest reason the myth endures? Deliberate fraud. Someone who blindly follows a crowd-maybe even toward catastrophe-is called a lemming. So why is the myth of mass lemming suicide so widely believed? For one, it provides an irresistible metaphor for human behavior. Lemmings can swim, so if they reach a water obstacle, such as a river or lake, they may try to cross it. When the concentration of lemmings becomes too high in one area, a large group will set out in search of a new home. Lemmings have large population booms every three or four years. However, this particular myth is based on some actual lemming behaviors. Instinct, it is said, drives them to kill themselves whenever their population becomes unsustainably large. People probably came up with the notion of exploding lemmings after seeing the picked-over lemming carcasses that were left behind following a migration.īut there is one myth that has held on tenaciously: Every few years, herds of lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off seaside cliffs. ![]() This is also a myth, of course-lemmings are indeed one of the more irascible rodents, but they mostly channel their rage into fights with other lemmings. (The prosaic truth is that they migrate in herds.) Some people also thought that lemmings explode if they become sufficiently angry. In the 17th century, naturalists perplexed by the habit of Norway lemmings to suddenly appear in large numbers, seemingly out of nowhere, came to the conclusion that the animals were being spontaneously generated in the sky and then falling to earth like rain. Lemmings are small creatures with wild reputations. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!Įncyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Patrick O'Neill Riley.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.COVID-19 Portal While this global health crisis continues to evolve, it can be useful to look to past pandemics to better understand how to respond today.Student Portal Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more.This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find. ![]()
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