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Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

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Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#111

Post by jmull »

somenameforme wrote: post #32

The scene may have been staged, but Wiki's entry on them suggests the demonstrated behavior is completely authentic, instead taking a more semantic argument about the term suicide: --- "Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide, in which animals voluntarily choose to die, b…

Pretty much the entire second half of the article addresses this directly.

Or find a way to watch that segment of the documentary. Those few lines of the narration don't really capture the narrative of the visual story-telling. (Though it was somewhat sickening to watch even before we knew the filmmakers were torturing and killing the lemmings rather than just observing them.)

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#112

Post by Tor3 »

felurx wrote: post #102
pastrami_panda wrote: post #62

I was hiking a summer when there was a 'lemming year'. You saw thousands of tiny carcasses strewn everywhere during that week, you accidently stepped on them as they ran under your hiking boots mid-step, if you sat down off trail they would start running up to you and attack. It was very surreal, they are very cute but also very fierce. Seeing a lemming run up to you and stand up on its hind legs and produce a high p…

The comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 has very similar content and is a few hours older than this one. Did you post the same thing under two usernames or something?

Here's another Scandinavian.. those "lemming years" as we called them used to be fairly common in the past, much more then than these days. They used to happen regularly every four years or so. I remember the summer of 1974 (I think it was), the roads were so slick with lemming carcasses that every early morning road maintenance crews would be out with machinery normally used for building/maintaining roads - I think the English term is "road grader". Roads were completely covered with blood and innards from lemmings. It was surreal.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#113

Post by furyofantares »

Pretty weird to see a "debunking" of "bogus behavior" followed up with descriptions of actual behavior that's pretty dang close to my impression of what they did. I never heard of it or thought of it as suicide.

It does sound like the Disney film, which almost none of the readers will have seen but a clip from, was totally fake and vile and was in fact bogus behavior in that it also wasn't even the right type of lemming. Everything about that sucks.

But it also kinda sucks that most of the article misled me; it wasn't until the description at the end and then reading the wikipedia and accounts here that I reverted back to somewhere near the initial impression I had.

Maybe I'm the weird one, and the popular idea really is about intentional suicide. But I always thought the popular idea was that sometimes large groups of them follow each other to their doom.

I mean, I appreciate the added nuance that 1) they were probably gonna die if they stayed where they were to begin with, there's just too many of them and 2) it's more commonly a very deadly trek, not literally the whole group dying at once, though it sounds like that does happen sometimes [and I only ever had the impression that it happens sometimes].

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#114

Post by mikestew »

Tor3 wrote: post #112
felurx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 has very similar content and is a few hours older than this one. Did you post the same thing under two usernames or something?

Here's another Scandinavian.. those "lemming years" as we called them used to be fairly common in the past, much more then than these days. They used to happen regularly every four years or so. I remember the summer of 1974 (I think it was), the roads were so slick with lemming carcasses that every early morning road maintenance crews would be out with machinery normally used for building/maintaining roads - I think…

I think the English term is "road grader"

Yup, these things:

https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/motor-grade...

Now, maybe you're thinking of something else, but a road grader would definitely do that grizzly job.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#115

Post by edgyquant »

felurx wrote: post #102
pastrami_panda wrote: post #62

I was hiking a summer when there was a 'lemming year'. You saw thousands of tiny carcasses strewn everywhere during that week, you accidently stepped on them as they ran under your hiking boots mid-step, if you sat down off trail they would start running up to you and attack. It was very surreal, they are very cute but also very fierce. Seeing a lemming run up to you and stand up on its hind legs and produce a high p…

The comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 has very similar content and is a few hours older than this one. Did you post the same thing under two usernames or something?

They really aren’t similar at all. Can you not be a Reddit and go around looking for things to accuse people of? Thanks.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#116

Post by the_af »

Jensson wrote: post #43
the_af wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm wrong but I read that to mean that if they get completely soaked in extreme winter weather, they'll die. This doesn't seem so bizarre. Some animals, both mammals and birds, have some protection against this because their hair/feathers are both greasy and help them keep "air cushions" that prevent water from completely soaking the body -- but if that ever happens in cold weather the animal is as good as dead…

Animals used to the winter survives being wet, at least large ones like moose, they fall through the ice from time to time and people help them up. Maybe lemmings are so small that it wasn't worth evolving it, but it seems like a big handicap since most animals needs to drink regularly even in the winter.

Yeah, I think what I said applies to small animals like birds and rodents, creatures without large fat reserves.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#118

Post by Tor3 »

mikestew wrote: post #114
Tor3 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another Scandinavian.. those "lemming years" as we called them used to be fairly common in the past, much more then than these days. They used to happen regularly every four years or so. I remember the summer of 1974 (I think it was), the roads were so slick with lemming carcasses that every early morning road maintenance crews would be out with machinery normally used for building/maintaining roads - I think…

I think the English term is "road grader" Yup, these things: https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/motor-grade... Now, maybe you're thinking of something else, but a road grader would definitely do that grizzly job.

That's what they used, yes.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#119

Post by kjs3 »

tgv wrote: post #78
pricci wrote: post #13

> The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. I guess the 50s where different times

City boy or girl? Me too, but I had some relatives with a farm, and some (quite a few, it would seem) farmers see animals as property and you can do to them whatever you want. If you need to cut their tail or their testicles for profit, you do it. Kill them? Sure. Put kittens in a bag with a few stones and throw them in a pond? Of course. And that's not looking at the industrial scale at which animals are mutilated f…

Your relatives are the abhorrent ones, not farm owners in general.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#120

Post by PeterStuer »

pastrami_panda wrote: post #105
felurx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 has very similar content and is a few hours older than this one. Did you post the same thing under two usernames or something?

I didn't see it, but everyone who has hiked during a lemming year has these types of stories about these crazy animals Edit: I read the comment you linked, the reason we have such similar language is because Swedes and Norwegians call it the same thing and I guess both of us were unsure if 'lemming year' is a widespread term :)

Belgian actually, but with Norwegian friends. :)
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