Just don’t tell me that Jimmy the Groundhog (I live in Wisconsin-sorry, Punxsutawney Phil!) can’t predict the arrival of spring. Captured lemmings were placed on a turntable to simulate the migration and chased over a cliff into the sea.Īlthough we’d like to think we’re more sophisticated today and skeptical than we were a few decades ago, still many animal photographs, posters, videos and “documentaries” are staged. In the second video, you’ll see how similar film footage was created.
In great part, it’s how the lemming-suicide myth began.
Watch the first video segment below, from the 1958 Walt Disney documentary, White Wilderness, Part II. This ebb and flow in their numbers is the result of a mass migration, which may include jumping off of cliffs into the water and swimming great distances to the point of exhaustion-even death. The truth is that every three or four years in some regions, the lemming population drops to near extinction then skyrockets again. Many people today, influenced by films such as the early Walt Disney documentaries of the 1950s and 1960s, still believe that on the Arctic tundra, lemmings running to a cliff and flinging themselves off is one of those flukes of nature.
#YOUTUBE LEMMINGS JUMPING OFF CLIFFS TV#
The top nature hoax-according to Animal Planet, the popular TV channel created by the BBC and Discovery Communications-is the suicidal nature of lemmings. WCS plans to track these changes as part of the Arctic Wildlife Observatories Linking Vulnerable Ecosystems (ArcticWOLVES) project, based at Laval University in Quebec.A popular rumor about lemmings is that they commit mass suicide when they migrate, but the truth is much less dramatic. Lemmings, by contrast, are conspicuously coloured, and behave aggressively towards predators and even human observers. Shifts in climate will force both lemmings and their predators to adjust, possibly causing changes in the abundance of near-Arctic species. Also, the tundra is experiencing unusual warm periods in winter, including freezing rain and episodes of thawing and freezing, which can coat much of the lemmings’ foods (sedges and dwarf shrubs) in ice.” “Later arrival of autumn snows, and earlier spring melts, could subject lemmings to longer periods of sub-freezing temperatures. “Sufficient snow depth insulates the rodents from frigid temperatures, allowing them to devote more energy to breeding and less to avoiding predators,” writes John Delaney of WCS. WCS reports that snow is likely “one of the key ingredients for lemming abundance and productivity.” WCS says that lemmings play a key role in the near-Arctic ecology, serving as “an important prey species for a number of predators, including arctic foxes, red foxes, rough-legged hawks, peregrine falcons, snowy and short-eared owls, jaegers, gulls, weasels, wolverines, and grizzly bears,” populations of which shift due to lemming abundance. The myth was was propagated by The Walt Disney Company documentary White Wilderness which staged scenes showing the animals leaping from cliffs. Don Reid/Wildlife Conservation SocietyĬontrary to popular belief, lemmings do not commit mass suicide when they migrate.
“The ability of lemmings to adapt to these changes will have a significant impact on the entire food web, so we need to understand more about lemming ecology within the context of climate change.”Ĭollared lemming.
“We need to know how climate change will affect a variety of resident and migratory predators that rely in large part on these small arctic rodents,” said Dr. The Bronx Zoo-based group has just announced plans to study the impact of global warming on these creatures of the far North. Lemmings, the rodents inaccurately believed to commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs, are at real risk from climate change, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
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