Lemmings Do Not Explode Or Throw Themselves Off Cliffs
Lemmings, the small
burrowing rodents that live in the Arctic regions, are an odd
bunch. They look a bit like hamsters, but they are notoriously
fierce. (Case in point: a lemming
attacking a sled dog.) Like many rodents, they are prodigious
reproducers, but the Norway lemming and the brown lemming have
particularly dramatic population booms. Their population can fluctuate
so chaotically that, for centuries, people have been coming up with wild
explanations for the overwhelming abundance of little
lemmings, followed by a seemingly sudden disappearance.
Locals "came to see the lemming as a crazed creature, and a swarm as 'the forerunner of war and disaster,'" writes Henry Nicholls for BBC. Karl S. Kruszelnicki at ABC Science recounts:
Back in the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg, tried to explain these variations in populations by saying that lemmings fell out of the sky in stormy weather, and then suffered mass extinctions with the sprouting of the grasses of spring.
The strangest myth—and the one that makes calling another person "lemming" an insult — is the idea that lemmings will mindlessly commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. It probably has a basis in reality: When "lemming years"
happen, some areas will grow so densely populated that groups of
lemmings will set off en masse to find better fields. While these
migrations may have inspired the suicide myth, one person may be largely
responsible for perpetuating it: Walt Disney...Continue reading...
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