Buzz
Animals are rarely noted for displaying suicidal behaviors. Perhaps because with a daily routine consisting of eat-sleep-defecate, there’s little room for contemplating the meaning of life or its futility. That is, except for the lemming—a small, furry rodent resembling a gerbil, which has become infamous for allegedly throwing itself off cliffs in a blind act of self-destruction. However, this long-standing myth actually stems from clever movie manipulation.
Lemming populations fluctuate wildly, ranging from vast swarms to near extinction. Over the years, theories about these population surges and declines have ranged from the supernatural to the absurd. As reported by ABC News in 2004:
"In the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg tried to explain these fluctuations in population by suggesting that lemmings would fall from the sky during stormy weather, only to suffer mass die-offs when the grasses of spring began to grow. In the 19th century, the naturalist Edward Nelson wrote that 'the Norton Sound Eskimo have an odd superstition that the White Lemming lives in the land beyond the stars and that it sometimes comes down to the earth, descending in a spiral course during snow-storms.'"
That was before the modern interpretation took hold: the belief that entire populations would tumble because groups of lemmings would suddenly charge off cliffs, leaping to their self-inflicted deaths without explanation. Thus, referring to someone as a lemming came to mean labeling them as a mindless follower of a herd, marching towards inevitable destruction.
However, this portrayal is unfair to these adorable, hamster-like creatures.
It turns out there’s no evidence that wild lemmings ever drive themselves over cliffs. In fact, the myth was fueled by a 1958 Disney documentary titled White Wilderness, where filmmakers deliberately herded lemmings off a cliff for dramatic effect. This staged spectacle proved to be a major hit, with the film eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. See a clip of the movie below.
In the cliff-diving scene, the tiny creatures plummet into the air, flailing in a way reminiscent of Mufasa in The Lion King, before crashing into the Arctic Sea below. The few survivors then swim further into the water, where the narrator ominously suggests they will soon meet their demise.
Since White Wilderness, this false narrative has made its way into modern culture, even appearing in a 2008 US Senate campaign ad and a song by Blink-182.
While the exact cause behind the fluctuating lemming populations remains unclear, some recent theories suggest their dramatic decline may be linked to the range of predators they attract, including the stoat—a short-tailed weasel capable of hunting lemmings even under snow during winter months.
As the documentary's narrator, Winston Hibler, observes: "In this land of many mysteries, it's a strange fact that the largest legends seem to collect around the smallest creatures."
