The term lemming has become something of a colloquial pejorative. Like many rodents, they are prodigious reproducers, but the Norway lemming and the brown lemming have particularly dramatic population booms. What does it mean if you call someone a lemming?Ī person who follows the will of others, especially in a mass movement, and heads straight into a situation or circumstance that is dangerous, stupid, or destructive: These lemmings that eat up conspiracy theories are so blinded by lies, they don’t even see the cliff they’re about to plummet over. The epic “lemming migration” was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on snow covered lazy-Susan style turntable. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. Is it true that Lemmings explode in herds?.Where did the myth of Lemmings come from?.This fraud led thousands of people who saw the film to say they had seen such a moment in what they thought was a documentary. The worst part is that a giant lemming suicide was staged in order to provide fodder for the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, when “filmmakers eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras were rolling.” It’s not a great excuse, but there is some truth to it.Īnd, apparently, the big lie about lemmings comes from a Disney nature film. If this myth hadn’t been repeated as fact so many times in so many places, more of us may have questioned it. Let’s give ourselves some credit here though. Over the past century, the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture.” Someone who blindly follows a crowd-maybe even toward catastrophe-is called a lemming. Or, as Britannica notes: “…it provides an irresistible metaphor for human behavior. Well, that’s because we find it too believable to question. We know a lot about animal behavior, so that raises the question: why do we still believe this even though we could easily look it up and find out it’s not true? Seeing some dead lemmings in the water (just because a handful out of hundreds drown) may have led people to believe in the suicide myth. And while they can swim, crossing bodies of water can be deadly for any group of animals. As a result, lemmings tend to separate, with a large group heading off to find a better environment. This is bad because too many lemmings in one place means there’s less food and other resources for everyone. The creatures often have population booms. But it may be the case that the myth originates with a few dead lemmings. Ok, so lemmings do not have any suicidal behavior, They do not follow each other off cliffs or commit any other act of mass suicide. Instinct, it is said, drives them to kill themselves whenever their population becomes unsustainably large.” Why we believe, Part 1 – The behavior of some lemmings The lemming legendĪccording to Britannica (and science, in general): “…one myth that has held on tenaciously: Every few years, herds of lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off seaside cliffs. But the most popular myth is the one that lemmings will follow each other off the side of a cliff.Īnd we tend to believe this because it comes with the explanation that people have seen piles of dead lemming bodies.īut it’s just not true. There are a lot of weird myths about lemmings (such as the myth that they explode when angry). Why do we think lemmings jump off cliffs? It comes from the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide in some unthinking way.Īnd that’s a load of bunk. We often use “lemming” as an insult towards people who seem to just go with the flow, even if that means following everyone off the edge of a cliff.

Lemmings jumping off cliffs myth disney