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This myth has been spread by lemmings’ strong migratory nature, with lemmings from colonies that are becoming saturated often driven to crossing dangerous, fast-flowing rivers and difficult terrain to find a new habitat and food source. In the northern hemisphere, even as far up as the Arctic. Lemmings do not commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs. Lemmings are rodents that are closely related to voles and meadow mice.Ī. So the mystery of why lemmings migrate remains.Ī.
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Although biologists originally favoured the migrate to survive theory to explain lemming's migration tendencies the migration patterns do not correlate with periods of food shortage. One possible, though flawed explanation, was that in times of need groups of lemmings would sacrifice themselves by performing mass migrations to pastures new.Ī. To call someone a lemming is to suggest he or she is a blind follower. Still, the facts haven’t mattered for the lemming’s public image. Today, it seems like nothing more than an exercise in animal cruelty. Biologists were keen to account for the reasoning behind sharp rises and subsequent falls in lemming population numbers. The unfortunate lemmings were then herded over a cliff and into the water below creating the movie’s most dramatic scene. However, it's thought that infamous footage of lemmings hurling themselves from a cliff in a nature documentary called 'White Wilderness' in 1958 was only possible because a camera crewmember 'encouraged' these small mammals over the edge.īut, contrary to legend, neither hunger nor any population-control mechanism drives them over the edge.Ī. However lemmings are quite good swimmers and usually make it back to dry land. Lemmings do seem to perform mass migrations periodically and, since they normally inhabit low lying areas, if a large group find themselves gathered at the top of a cliff, they will instinctively jump over the edge. Lemmings, contrary to popular belief, are not suicidal, which would be a rather difficult hereditary trait, either en mass or singularly.Ī.