![]() ![]() “You can clearly see that when they fall over the cliff, they were absolutely not prepared for that.” “You can see distress in the lemmings,” says Fauteux of the scene. It was billed as a documentary, but the scene was faked, with people behind the camera herding the animals to their staged deaths. But it was the 1958 Walt Disney Productions film White Wilderness that cemented that myth, with footage of lemmings charging off a cliff. Those strange boom-and-bust cycles led to the story that lemmings commit mass suicide when they become too numerous. MORE: What does it take to move a rotting whale carcass? Glute strength and Vicks VapoRub. “You have to be careful to not step on them.” “You have a new outbreak, with lemmings all over the place,” Fauteux says. So Fauteux and his team-they work each summer at research sites on Bylot Island and Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, and near Salluit in northern Quebec-will see an “outbreak” with a bumper crop of lemmings one year before their numbers drop to near zero the following year, and perhaps stay that way for another season before suddenly exploding again. Lemmings undergo population cycles that last three to four years, during which their numbers can fluctuate a hundredfold. The legends, misunderstandings and outright fraud that added up to that reputation are based on the mysterious population cycles that make the tiny rodents fascinating to Fauteux, a research scientist in zoology at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Natural Heritage Campus in Gatineau, Que. And it probably goes something like this: lemmings follow each other around in a brainless herd, and when the mood strikes them, they will commit mass suicide by jumping off any accessible cliff. ![]() If you know less about lemmings than Dominique Fauteux does-and you almost certainly do-then what you do know about lemmings is likely false. ![]()
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