Lemmings don't jump off of cliffs

Lemmings are small rodents from the Arctic that belong to the same family as hamsters. They are sometimes referred to as “Arctic chicken nuggets” because of how they are primary consumers and how many Arctic predators prey on them. The most strange feature about them is that they have extremely mysterious population cycles, gaining a dramatic burst in population once every 3 to 4 years and then experiencing a great decline to their near extinction the next year, the cause of which still remains largely unexplained today. This has led to many theories, the most popular being that due to their numbers being too numerous and them just not being intelligent, that they commit mass suicide by jumping off of a cliff, which is false.

However, before it was believed that lemmings committed mass suicide, it was actually believed that they fell out of the sky. This belief originated from the 1530s, where the geographer, Zeigler of Strasbourg, attempted to explain their fluctuating populations by saying that they fell out of the sky during stormy weather and died during the spring. A theory that he picked up from the folklore of the native Yupik and Iñupia peoples of Alaska.

The myth of lemmings committing mass suicide has existed for a long period of time, going back to the late 19th century. In an 1877 issue of Popular Science Monthly titled “The Norwegian Lemming and Its Migrations”, William Crotch wrote about how lemmings migrated across the Atlantic in search of the submerged continent of Lemuria.

“No doubt, therefore, they [lemmings] commit themselves to the Atlantic in the belief that it is as passable as those lakes and fjords which they have already successfully dared, and that beyond its waves lies a land [Lemuria] which they are never destined to reach.”

The myth was most greatly popularized by the 1958 Academy Award winning Disney documentary “White Wilderness”, which included a scene where lemmings were shown hurling themselves off of the edge of a cliff into the ocean, where the narrator explained that they were swimming, not to land, but further out to sea to what was essentially their deaths (since lemmings can swim but will drown if they become overexhausted). However, the scene was faked. The producers of the film loaded lemmings that they bought into a truck and proceeded to dump them off the edge of a cliff or put them on spinning turntables so they would fly off the edge. Moreover, the scene was actually filmed in Alberta, where lemmings do not live in and which is landlocked, and not in the arctic/near the arctic sea like the documentary depicted.

The myth is false, so what causes the strange population fluctuations of lemmings? While it still remains greatly unexplained, one theory is that their population is closely tied with their predator’s populations, more specifically, the ermine/stoat. Due to the fact that their population has this great increase every 3-4 years, and that ermines/stoats are not present in the ecosystem every year, unlike their other predators.

Even to this day, you may have heard of the phrase “don’t be a lemming” meaning to not blindly follow a leader to your death, but they don’t do that. Because lemmings don’t jump off of cliffs.