Many people believe that lemmings periodically commit mass suicide. Allegedly, once every few years, when the population becomes too large, the animals go in orderly rows to the abyss or river bank to commit suicide. We checked whether this is actually true.

The idea of mass suicide of lemmings - small rodentsov, living in the tundra, is very common. People believethat these rodents periodically commit mass suicide: when the population size becomes too large, they themselves go to certain death by throwing themselves off cliffs.

Many Internet users have come across comics about suicide lemmings. This series is created by German artist Joshi Sauer, and the stories in it are based on the fact that rodents allegedly experience a strange passion for suicide.

Although these comics are ironic, they are based on the belief that these animals periodically commit mass suicide. Suicide Lemmings don't just appear in comic books. flash in the media, films, become characters board games.

Usually we are talking about Norwegian lemmings. These animals live in a network of branching tunnels underground, and the sizes of their populations can vary greatly depending on the year. When lemming numbers are at their lowest point, the number of animals can be one per 100,000 square meters. m. But at other times their number in the same territory can reach 3000 individuals. It is at this moment that lemmings are believed to voluntarily go to their death.

“They say they march to the sea and commit suicide there,” tells Nils Christian Stenseth, Norwegian biologist, professor at the University of Oslo and co-author of the book The Biology of Lemmings.

It is believed that such large-scale changes in lemming numbers are influenced by many factors, one of which is snow. “If the snow is soft and dry, it allows the lemmings to create a space underneath where they can comfortably exist during the winter and breed,” explains Stenseth. After a couple of winters like this in a row, the number of lemmings can increase significantly.

A Norwegian lemming crosses a pond. Nature Picture Library/Alamy

And when the population grows, lemmings begin to migrate. Due to the large number of animals, the already sparse tundra vegetation is not enough, and lemmings have to move en masse in search of new food.

The migrating hordes of these rodents, according to Stenseth, are very purposeful: they are not stopped by almost any obstacles, not even rivers or the bottlenecks of fjords. “They swim very well,” adds the biologist. “They can easily cross small bodies of water.”

The idea that lemmings do not migrate, but rather jump off cliffs to drown, became became popular after the 1958 Walt Disney documentary “White Wasteland” was released. The film about northern wildlife showed footage of lemmings falling from the shore into the sea.

The footage was accompanied by the speaker's speech:

“...driven by inexplicable hysteria, each [of the lemmings] begins a march that will lead them to a strange fate. This fate is to jump into the ocean. They became victims of obsession, of one single thought: “Forward! Forward!” They still have one last chance to stop, but they still move forward, throwing themselves down... This is how the legendary mass suicide plays out.”

In fact, these were staged shots. The film itself was filmed in Alberta, Canada, not Norway. Lemmings are not found in Alberta, so they were imported there by buying them from Inuit children. Moreover, there were not Norwegian lemmings, but another species - brown lemmings, which live in North America. They managed to get only a few dozen rodents, and the filmmakers “increased” their number through combined filming and editing.

“It really looks like suicide,” admits Nils Stenseth. “But they were just thrown there from a car.”

If you look closely at the footage, you can see that some lemmings stop before jumping, trying to turn back. This is a production. In reality, lemmings did not commit any mass suicide.

During forced migrations, lemmings actually can jumping off cliffs, not to drown, but to cross a water barrier. At this time, some animals may die, but not to reduce the population size, but due to other factors: lack of strength to cross the water, hypothermia, hunger, etc. These deaths are by no means mass suicides, but an accident. The myth about suicidal lemmings appeared due to staged footage of a “documentary” film that distorted reality.