The Lemmings Who Never Jumped
Millions of people believe lemmings follow each other off cliffs in mass suicide. They saw it in a Disney film. It was staged.
What was reported
The idea that lemmings, small Arctic rodents, sometimes kill themselves by the thousand is very old. In the 1500s, some European writers believed they fell from the sky in storms, and later stories told of them throwing themselves into the sea.
In 1958, Disney's Oscar-winning nature film White Wilderness showed lemmings rushing over a cliff into the Arctic Ocean. It fixed the image in people's minds for generations.
Explanations offered
In 1982 a Canadian journalist revealed that the scene was filmed in Alberta, far from the sea, with lemmings bought in from elsewhere, and that the animals were pushed off a river bank by the crew. Real lemming populations boom and crash, and they migrate when crowded, sometimes drowning while crossing water, but they don't commit suicide.
- When
- Filmed in 1958
- Where
- Alberta, Canada
- Witnesses
- Cinema audiences around the world
- Status
- Myth
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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