Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

I had a huge argument with my philosophy professor about this. Our class was discussing the distinguishing characteristics between humans and animals. Someone brought up humans commit suicide while animals don&#x27;t. The professor claimed that was false and brought up lemmings as evidence. I chimed in that lemming suicides were most likely myth and even if it was real, we shouldn&#x27;t accept the idea of lemming suicides until we have definitive proof. He claimed lemming suicides were established fact and that if I or anyone rejected the idea in our papers on the topic, we&#x27;d be penalized for positing a factually incorrect statement. A bit of back and forth later, he said he was the ultimate authority on the topic and ended the discussion.<p>Naturally, in my paper, I wrote that lemming suicides were likely myth ( with sources ) and naturally I got penalized.<p>I still remember it years later and whenever the topic of lemming suicides come up, I make it my business to correct people. Years from now, on my death bed, my last words will be &quot;lemming suicide is a myth&quot;.

This is covered in the 99% Invisible podcast episode 256 Sounds Natural - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;sounds-natural&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;sounds-natural&#x2F;</a><p>I found this entire episode fascinating, especially the part about Elephant footsteps being nearly silent in the real world.

Disney popularized the myth, but I think it was around before them. I think they wanted to get video of those famous&#x2F;interesting lemming suicides but the lemmings wouldn&#x27;t do it, so they coerced them into it.

Talk about unnecessary cruelty, lemmings are quite cute creatures, can&#x27;t imagine what was going thru their heads (&quot;the Disney filmmakers&quot;) when they threw all those lemmings off a cliff to their deaths for a film.

Disney is a money-many endeavor that sometimes cuts corners and spreads untruths. I&#x27;m not against making money, just against those who would lie and defraud others to make more of it.<p>Businessinsider.com has a page that shows four that Disney apologized about or said were untrue. [1]<p>In the same way, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and others were believed to be great reporters, even though they created their own sensationalized fake news to get ratings.<p>One of the items from Rather was called &quot;Fake but Accurate&quot; by Rather. <i>&quot;The New York Times&#x27; headline report on this interview, including the phrase &quot;Fake but Accurate,&quot; created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS&#x27;s broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS&#x27;s news division.&quot;</i> [2]<p>One of Williams stories about being in a flaming plane that was shot down was debunked by the soldiers who were in the plane with him, the plane that was unhit and unlit. Williams later apologized, saying he didn&#x27;t <i>&quot;know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.&quot;</i> [3]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;discovery-channels-fake-documentaries-2014-9" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;discovery-channels-fake-docum...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Killian_documents_controversy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Killian_documents_controversy</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;newshour&#x2F;nation&#x2F;nbcs-brian-williams-apologizes-false-iraq-war-story" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;newshour&#x2F;nation&#x2F;nbcs-brian-williams-apol...</a>

If any entertainment company is known for taking old myths and putting a new family-friendly shine on &#x27;em it&#x27;s Disney!

&quot;White Wilderness&quot; snippet - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM</a>

Terriers stay small because they&#x27;re given whiskey as pups and the way to catch a bird is to throw salt on its tail are two other childhood facts that I find hard to completely give up.

upon reading the whole article, it is mostly true.<p>&quot;mass dispersal&quot; occurs when the population grows too much and the food runs out, sometimes it can be very directional, and sometimes they will pile up on the shore until they gets too packed and they try to swim across frigid waters.<p>the Disney mass suicide documentary says this can be observed every 7 - 10 years, and then they over dramatized how it looks<p>edit: removed blue planet reference, peace!<p>edit2: alright folks, what is inaccurate or disagreeable about what I wrote? I&#x27;m downvoted so far that I can&#x27;t even post a rebuttal anymore and have zero feedback about how I read the Alaska Government&#x27;s article incorrectly

Just a few days ago on hn I discovered the stanford prison expweiment was largely faked, and now this. I guess this is good reason to be suspicious of pop science factoids that often get thrown around in discussions.

Oh wow, this brings me back. I did a report in 6th grade about this, and had to try really hard to convince all my friend the lemmings game lied to them. I remember typing it on an electric typewriter.

An entire genre of adventure game, reduced to simple entertainment. :-)<p>Yet another black mark against Disney&#x27;s attempts to make &quot;nature more interesting&quot; only to be just making up just so stories.

Wait.. is the game based on this same fictional fact?

I&#x27;m still mad at the discovery channel for convincing me that Megaladon was still out there.

There&#x27;s a great short story by Arthur C. Clarke about lemmings, but he does admit in a later foreword that the premise is actually a myth.

So do we know whether Disney actually killed lemmings for a film?<p>There&#x27;s some people claiming that &#x27;most survived&#x27; and others accepting that they were killed.<p>While I&#x27;m not much of an animal rights activist, killing animals relatively ethically in medical research seems like a far cry from tossing lemmings off of cliffs.

In unrelated news, 500 sheep killed themselves by jumping off a cliff in Turkey: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hurriyetdailynews.com&#x2F;500-sheep-die-in-mass-suicide-jump-in-eastern-turkey-133225" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hurriyetdailynews.com&#x2F;500-sheep-die-in-mass-suici...</a>

And myth explanations spawn more myths. I had read (forgot the source) that it was a myth and that the lemmings were really jumping off cliffs to swim to an island people weren&#x27;t generally aware of.<p>Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.

This is triply interesting for me because I had <i>never heard of this myth</i> and, reading the comments, I appear the be the only one out of the loop on the myth itself or the game. I wonder how many other pop-sci myths I&#x27;m unaware of.

Oh wow, they killed animals just to make a film?<p>I am a Disney fan but never knew about this. Disappointed. I would think modern Disney probably is much better than that nowadays. I think nothing like this would happen today thanks to CGI.

Disney seemed as determined to create a dark analogy as the Standford Prison guy.

I&#x27;m glad we had the myth for a bit, if only for the game.

There should be a list of commonly known facts that people who are new to the internet have to read so they don&#x27;t think things like this are novel.

Nature documentaries are laboriously produced works of fiction.

Even more childhood dreams destroyed. Fuck Micky Mouse!

This is not my personal experience.<p>Lemmings are fearless creatures that will scream to any animal, including humans, that cross their path.<p>I have seen a Lemmings confronting a crow. The crow sends the lemmings flying on three different occasions until it took the lemming dead body and left flying. The lemmings never tried to run or hide, it just was screaming at the crow until its very last moments.<p>So I can see that &quot;mass suicide&quot; is a myth. But it has some true on it looking at the lemmings&#x27; behaviour.