4/16/2023 0 Comments Funny lemmings jumping off cliffs![]() ![]() The many dead lemmings found after a population boom do suggest catastrophe. "They were tipped into it from the truck." "Only they didn't march to the sea," says Stenseth. In an infamous sequence, the lemmings reach the edge of a precipitous cliff, and the voiceover tells us that "this is the last chance to turn back, yet over they go, casting themselves bodily out into space." He paid Eskimos "$1 a live lemming," says. Although all lemmings experience population highs and lows, the accounts of mass movements were all based on observations of Norwegian lemmings, not the brown lemmings that Disney used. In the 1958 academy award-winning Disney documentary called White Wilderness, dozens of lemmings are shown tumbling down a cliff, bouncing off rocks and landing in the sea, where they struggle against the waves.īut the footage was a farce, explains Nicholls:įor a start, White Wilderness – filmed in Canada rather than Scandinavia – depicts the wrong species. While these migrations may have inspired the suicide myth, one person may be largely responsible for perpetuating it: Walt Disney. It probably has a basis in reality: When " lemming years" happen, some areas will grow so densely populated that groups of lemmings will set off en masse to find better fields. The strangest myth-and the one that makes calling another person "lemming" an insult - is the idea that lemmings will mindlessly commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Kruszelnicki at ABC Science recounts:īack in the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg, tried to explain these variations in populations by saying that lemmings fell out of the sky in stormy weather, and then suffered mass extinctions with the sprouting of the grasses of spring. Locals "came to see the lemming as a crazed creature, and a swarm as 'the forerunner of war and disaster,'" writes Henry Nicholls for BBC. But can he teach them to use their brains and stop making terrible group decisions? John Briggs has created a wonderfully funny, quirky tale about staying true to yourself, while Nicola Slater’s witty illustrations capture all the humor and pathos of Larry’s situation.Lemmings, the small burrowing rodents that live in the Arctic regions, are an odd bunch. They look a bit like hamsters, but they are notoriously fierce. (Case in point: a lemming attacking a sled dog.) Like many rodents, they are prodigious reproducers, but the Norway lemming and the brown lemming have particularly dramatic population booms. Their population can fluctuate so chaotically that, for centuries, people have been coming up with wild explanations for the overwhelming abundance of little lemmings, followed by a seemingly sudden disappearance. ![]() Larry’s very independent-minded and he won’t follow his fellow lemmings blindly to their doom. ![]() So if one jumps off a cliff, the others will jump right after him. Think before you leap! Lemmings look alike, they sound alike, and they act alike. Hilarious storytelling is coupled with equally hilarious scenes laced with a litter of orange critters arguing and complaining about the odd duck among them. Briggs and Slater join forces to create a comedic retelling of the lemmings ‘jumping off cliffs’ myth. When Larry returns home, he has to find a way to save the other lemmings before they jump off a cliff. The response from the Arctic rodents is a resounding ‘yes.’ Larry knows he doesn’t fit in, so-attempting the impossible-Larry lives with the seals, moves in with the puffins, and even visits the polar bears. The lemmings call a meeting to determine if all lemmings should be the same. Taking the road less traveled, Larry sleds with puffins, plays bongos, and orders pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and hot sauce. While ‘all the other lemmings look alike, sound alike, and act alike,’ and will gladly follow their friends to jump off a cliff, Larry is different. Larry is different from the other lemmings. ![]()
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