Talk:Lemming/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Is the Myth of No Suicide a Myth?

If large numbers of Norwegian lemmings in fact do jump/swim into bodies of water in peak years, and die, doesn't a behavior leading directly to death constitute suicide?

We have no idea what they're thinking -- but pointing a gun at your head and pulling the the trigger would still be called a "suicidal act", even by a deranged person who didn't understand the consequences of the behavior.

So isn't the "myth that lemmings commit suicide" itself -- as regards Norwegian lemmings -- a myth, a sort of anti-populist hyper-correction?

I agree with your point

The word "myth" should be removed as it is too strong a word. Rather a simple set of corrections would be more appropriate. One correction needed is the difference between migration and dispersal. The lemmings don't migrate, they disperse. The other clarification would speak to your point about intent and language. People are very sensitive about suicide in their own experience, particularly as to how the definition applies to friends and family. But we commonly use the term "suicidal" to describe actions where there is no intent to do self harm but rather a foolish failure to recognize the potential of an act to inflict self harm. So once again the article could inform rather than debate falsely. The term misadventure could instead be introduced as that term is often used to describe behaviors like the lemmings where they do indeed enter bodies of water and drown in large numbers and also sometimes fall off cliffs on their efforts to disperse. The "debunking" is so overstated as to itself be a myth. Likely spawned by descriptions of staging by a Disney movie that were then conflated into the wider realm of behavioral descriptions of lemmings. The metaphor of lemmings applied to human behavior is obviously a casualty of the debunking hyperbole and is clearly a handy counterstatement in argument when the metaphor is invoked. That is likely the prime motivation of the overstatement that lemmings marching to the sea is a myth. Lemmings actually do huddle on shores in large numbers then in large numbers enter bodies of water they can't cross. 104.181.247.245 (talk) 18:35, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

He's got a point

When people think of lemmings and suicide, I'd hope that (in most cases) they don't believe the rodents are literally succumbing to clinical depression.

The article states:

...large migrating groups [of Norway lemmings] will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death

Assuming this is correct: in what sense are lemmings not killing themselves? drone5 (talk) 03:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

uspn (talk) 07:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC): Well, a lot of them are not really jumping, they're just being pushed off the cliff by the mass of lemmings approaching the cliff. And even when they hit the water, they just start swimming, as they have done previously on their journey to cross rivers and lakes. If they were suicidal, they'd just let themselves drown.

Vandalism 3

i bet a fiver rodents arnt pies... someone vandalised here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.192.29.221 (talk) 12:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Britannica

moving this fragment of the main article here. It appears to be attributed to EB, however I found no primary sources that would substantiate that the phenomenon occurs in noteworthy numbers or in fact that it occurs at all. Various sources describe why the norwegian lemming became the subject of so many myths but can not find any that would mention this particular detail - see eg http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/264/1378/31.full.pdf+html or http://www.behav.org/Student_essay/rodentia/Bjerkvig_Christina%20_Lemmus_lemmus.pdf . Could please someone doublecheck the original EB article and see if it has any references of quality? Richiez (talk) 20:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming. They then swim to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore.

References

Major Problems

The "myth" section has serious issues. It's written as if its an entirely unsupported belief, rather than just an exaggeration of a known phenomenon. When lemmings migrate, they do not commit suicide en masse, but they do exhibit counter survival behaviors. They will migrate through dangerous predator-heavy regions, taking tremendous losses, swim lengthy distances till many die of drowning or exhaustion and even yes, when pressed by enough numbers behind them, be forced off cliffs into water.

The most basic version of the "lemming myth" has nothing to do with suicide at all, just that lemmings blindly, stupidly follow each other into dangerous situations...and in this form, it is not entirely incorrect...at least during migratory periods. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 01:41, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Why exactly is the word "myth" being used? First, the section does not describe what the "myth" is. Then it continues to describe the myth with facts that seem to support my idea of this "myth". Angry bee (talk) 04:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

1883 reference to lemming suicide

I came across a passing reference to lemmings drowning during migration in this 1883 article in The American Naturalist. http://books.google.com/books?id=m35NAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA319&ots=WGFjf02dIx&pg=PA321#v=onepage&q&f=false

"We say it is instinct that drives the Norwegian lemmings to go west periodically in millions until they are drowned in the idle attempt to swim across the Atlantic" & "The faculty that carries the lemming to destruction..."

Note that this is a passing reference to lemming suicide (the article is focused on cicada behavior, not lemmings), and as such appears to be a well accepted "fact" by the time the article was written. Also, this is a biological journal. While we'd expect biologists to know better, lemmings we probably poorly studied at that point in time. Lemming suicide may have been a "fact" accepted by biologists in 1883, but it's not clear from this article if the lemming suicide meme was known to the general public. 192.104.39.2 (talk) 15:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

possible 1838 reference

It seems valuable to know how far back accounts of stampede-induced deaths goes. (The current text is vague on whether migratory urges actually result in mass deaths or only in migrations out of specific locales.) I happened across a reference to this idea in a 1901 translation of an 1838 French work by Charles Fourier, but i have not been able to find the reference to lemmings in either of two editions of the French.

French editions on the Internet Archive:

• https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_CIIPAAAAQAAJ/ (1841)
• https://archive.org/details/thoriedelunitun00fourgoog/ (1843)

English translation by Julia Franklin:

• https://archive.org/details/selectionsfromw00fourgoog/ (1901; p. 138)

If social experiments have miscarried, it is because some fatality has impelled all speculators to work with bodies of poor people whom they subjected to a monastic-industrial discipline, chief obstacle to the working of the series. Here, as in everything else, it is ever SIMPLISM (simplisme) which misleads the civilised, obstinately sticking to experiments with combinations of the poor; they cannot elevate themselves to the conception of a trial with combinations of the rich. They are veritable Lemning rats (migrating rats of Lapland), preferring drowning in a pond to deviating from the route which they have decided upon.—(U. U., iii., 156.)

Crazilla^{talk|contribs} 10:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Pets?

I came to this article wondering if anyone domesticates lemmings as pets, as people do with hamsters, rats, gerbils, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, and other rodents. Googling around, I saw that Steppe Lemmings are common pets, but those are actually voles rather than lemmings.

Then again, squirrels are common rodents too, but they are seldom seen as pets — perhaps for similar reasons? ~Amatulić (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Kids around here may catch them sometimes and keep them for a few days until they die or escape but I've never heard of them being kept as pets. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 23:54, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

That's odd. I wonder why. Do they smell bad? ...But then again, odor doesn't keep people from keeping ferrets in the house. Anyway, I was curious about how these critters do in captivity, but I guess it's so uncommon to keep them (let alone raise or breed them) that nobody really knows. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

a quick google search says you can buy them in pet stores http://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-Pet-Lemmings 24.142.9.20 (talk) 08:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Not the same thing. That page is about caring for Steppe Lemmings, which, as I said in my first paragraph above, are not actually lemmings, but voles. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Lemming Metaphor.

Linguist scholar, Noam Chomsky is not averse to using the Lemming metaphor to describe human behaviour, see: 'Noam Chomsky answers questions after delivering speech at the University of Maryland Friday, January 27, 2012' ; You Tube,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWVWOiRzPb0 ----

Borgias

I need help! I added a reference from the Showtime series The Borgias, but it ended up pointing to a disamb.. whatever you call those pages... instead of to the correct Borgias Showtime series page. I don't know how to fix this. Please help... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samantha1961 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Photo camouflage

I have uploaded a photo showing the perfect lemming camougflage when still on a rock. May be somebody that has right can mofify and put this picture. The black spot are mimicking black lichen and the yellow pink some other type of clear lichen on mountain rocks. File:Http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lemming camouflage.JPG — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kervennic (talk • contribs) 00:49, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

References to TV references

References to TV references should include the Only Fools and Horses episode Christmas Crackers — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thezerocool83 (talk • contribs) 12:32, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Lemming metaphor in songs

Should be added: Jethro Tull's "Moths" (1978) song mentions the lemming suicide metaphor: "Life's too long (as the Lemming said)...".

DOL 79.10.129.111 (talk) 16:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

The following is very, very likely not important, but I'm not sure whether only *important* references should be added, or whether completeness would also have its worth. Anyway, you can decide!

Lemmings are also mentioned in Reinhard Mey's 1998 song "Das Narrenschiff" (the ship of fools), with the following lyrics:

Der Ausguck ruft vom höchsten Mast: "Endzeit in Sicht" Doch sie sind wie versteinert und sie hören ihn nicht Sie ziehen wie Lemminge in willenlosen Horden Es ist als hätten alle den Verstand verloren Sich zum Niedergang und zum Verfall verschworen Und ein Irrlicht ist ihr Leuchtfeuer geworden

In English: Can be found on: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/das-narrenschiff-ship-fools.html (full-text search for 'lemmings') — Preceding unsigned comment added by BercherP (talk • contribs) 11:13, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Seems that "Cruel Camera" may have gotten wrong - any better sources?

The Cruel Camera doc claims that a turntable was used to "fling" the lemmings off the cliff, a claim which is reproduced here. Every other source I've seen on this refers separately to the use of turntables to film fake migration footage, and to lemmings being herded off the cliff by people off-camera, but I can find no other reference to the unlikely claim that the turntable was used to force them off the cliff (and for that matter, I have a hard time imagining how one would even accomplish this). Anyone able to find other sources not citing that doc that explain this claim at all? Bolddeciever (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it would be difficult to predict at which point of the turntables' revolution when the lemming would "fly". Eben if (by practice and error) one could figure out the 'sweet spot', even at 78rpm, the turntable would need to be right at the edge of the cliff, making filming it fraught with error L-Bit (talk) 06:28, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

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Duplication

There is duplication in the Misconceptions and Popular Culture sections about the mass suicide theory and Disney's hand in popularising it. Jonpatterns (talk) 19:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)