McNutty the Clown and I were talking about Lemmings and the crazy truth and myth that has followed them for centuries.
I thought that the mass suicide off a cliff that they are so well known for must have been human created, he looked it up and this is what he got.
(Citing Wikipedia)
"Lemming populations go through rapid growths and subsequent crashes that have entered popular consciousness as a supposedly "widespread" phenomenon, first noted in an encyclopaedia in 1908 but famously promulgated by the Walt Disney Pictures film, White Wilderness. White Wilderness depicted a mass suicide using staged footage of a dozen or so tame lemmings purposely driven into the sea. This created one of the greatest myths, causing many people to believe that they ran off cliffs on purpose, commiting suicide. Based on this myth, the term "lemming" is often used in slang to denote those who mindlessly follow the crowd, even if destruction is the result.
In fact, the behavior of lemmings is much the same as that of many other rodents which have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter that their natural habitat cannot provide. The actual reason for their 'suicide' deaths is because lemmings have poor eyesight and cannot distinguish a small river, which they can easily cross, from a fjord, in which they will almost surely drown.[ citation needed]
Stories about lemmings go back many centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was much speculation in learned circles that lemmings were in fact spontaneously generated by conditions of the air. This was argued against, successfully, by the natural historian Ole Worm, who provided one of the first published dissections of a lemming. In his investigation, Worm showed that a lemming contained anatomy similar to most other rodents.
The populations of predatory creatures like foxes and owls follow the population changes of lemmings and voles."
you were spot on about those pesky humans slaughtering innocents for phony facts.
Friday, December 08, 2006
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