Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior • Hacker News Board

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#131

Post by jstarfish » Sun, Nov 05, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #129

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…

> the demonstrated behavior is completely authentic But Attempting to cross a body of water is quite a bit different than plunging off a cliff. A rather low-to-the-ground animal has limited information about the width/risk of a water obstacle, but they do know what happens if they walk off a cliff. That's something they encounter in the course of normal daily behaviours required to provision fitness. Faking the cliff…

IIRC herds of buffalo would fall off of cliffs because you can't see the cliff ahead of you when you're face-to-ass with the beast in front of you.

Everything I learned as a kid was later proven to be a myth, so what have I ever really known...?

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#132

Post by jstarfish » Sun, Nov 05, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #107

tgv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure where you are that "wild animals on my land are my property" is a popular sentiment, but it's certainly not in my neck of the woods. Farmers here absolutely kill dangerous and nuisance animals, but it's because they are dangerous and/or pests. They also commonly hunt, both for resources and for sport. But it's definitely not acceptable to drown kittens. Anyone doing that here would be rightfully treated…

Dunno about them, but you don't have to look far in America.

Story from Georgia: I was a contractor working in a creepy old rural courthouse overnight. In the early hours of the morning, I kept seeing shadows in my periphery and thought I was hallucinating. Turned out to be a baby bat trapped in the room.

I spent the next few hours chasing it around trying to trap it with a wastebin. Eventually succeeded, called my boss and they called Animal Control. They were too busy to come out but said they'd "send someone." I stuck around and worked a double so nobody accidentally released it again; the day staff were all older ladies and it would have been pandemonium.

6 hours later, two facility maintenance workers from the city show up. I show them where it is, they say thanks and get in position around it. They proceeded to kick the can over and stomp it to death.

(That being my experience with "Animal Control" to date, I later caught a lost dog in rural California. This time, I just called the police, but they referred me to the Humane Society. Here we go again...except they showed up within an hour and collected him without incident.)

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#133

Post by ClimaxGravely » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

throwaway74093 wrote: post #84

ClimaxGravely wrote: post #28

This reminds me when I found out the truth of a childhood movie of mine : Milo and Otis

Could you elaborate on that? From a superficial read on Wikipedia it appears the alleged abuses were denied by Japanese Humane Societies. >The Adventures of Milo and Otis ... is a 1986 Japanese[2] adventure comedy-drama film about two animals, Milo (an orange tabby cat) and Otis (a pug). >When the film was released, some animal welfare organizations alleged to have had a number of complaints from people who had seen…

That's news to me! I'll see if I can find anything in Japanese. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.