Lemming

A lemming is a small rodent, usually found in or near the Arctic in tundra biomes. Lemmings form the subfamily Arvicolinae (also known as Microtinae) together with voles and muskrats, which form part of the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes rats, mice, hamsters and gerbils. They play an important role in the Arctic ecosystem, acting as grazers of mosses and grasses and as the primary prey (food) source for most Arctic carnivores. A longstanding myth claims that they exhibit herd mentality and jump off cliffs, committing mass suicide.

A lemming is a small rodent, usually found in or near the Arctic in tundra biomes. Lemmings form the subfamily Arvicolinae (also known as Microtinae) together with voles and muskrats, which form part of the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes rats, mice, hamsters and gerbils. They play an important role in the Arctic ecosystem, acting as grazers of mosses and grasses and as the primary prey (food) source for most Arctic carnivores. A longstanding myth claims that they exhibit herd mentality and jump off cliffs, committing mass suicide. ==In popular culture and media== The misconception of lemming "mass suicide" is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. Due to this misconception, "lemming" is sometimes used allegorically to describe humans who exhibit a lack of independent thinking and a willingness to follow orders from superiors, social trends, or fads even to the point of self-harm. A similar term is sheeple. James Thurber's 1941 short story "Interview with a Lemming" ends with the human scientist wondering why lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown themselves, and the lemming replying that it wonders why humans don't. The myth was mentioned in "The Marching Morons", a 1951 short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth. In 1955, Disney Studio illustrator Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title "The Lemming with the Locket". This comic, which was inspired by a 1953 American Mercury article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs. Perhaps the most influential and infamous presentation of the myth was the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, which won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature and in which producers threw lemmings off a cliff to their deaths to fake footage of a "mass suicide", as well as faked scenes of mass migration. A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Cruel Camera, found the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown from Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where, far from "casting themselves bodily out into space" (as the film's narrator states), they were, in fact, dumped off the cliff by the camera crew from a truck. Because of the limited number of lemmings at their disposal, which in any case were the wrong subspecies, the migration scenes were simulated using tight camera angles and a large, snow-covered turntable. In the animated Disney film Zootopia (2016), lemmings are employed as investment bankers of Lemmings Brothers, named after the bank that went bankrupt in 2008. Alaska Wildlife News. Lemmings, dying on camera (via the Wayback Machine).

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1367691609 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.