Lemming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the rodent. For the video game, see Lemmings (video game). For other uses, see Lemming (disambiguation).
iLemmings
A lemming
A lemming
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Cricetidae
Subfamily: Arvicolinae
Tribe: Lemmini*
Genera

Dicrostonyx
Lemmus
Synaptomys
Myopus
 * Incomplete listing: see vole

Lemmings are small rodents, usually found in or near the Arctic. Together with the voles and muskrats, they make up the subfamily Arvicolinae (also known as Microtinae), which forms part of the largest mammal radiation by far, the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes the rats, mice, hamsters, and gerbils.

Lemmings mostly weigh 30 to 112 grams (1–4 oz) and are about 7 to 15 centimetres (2.75 – 6 in) long. They usually have long, soft fur and very short tails. They are herbivorous, feeding mostly on leaves and shoots, grasses, and sedges in particular, but also roots and bulbs in some cases. Like many rodents, their incisors grow continuously, allowing them to exist on much tougher forage than would otherwise be possible.

Lemmings do not hibernate through the harsh northern winter. They remain active, finding food by burrowing through the snow and utilising grasses clipped and stored in advance. They are solitary animals by nature, meeting only to mate and then going their separate ways, but like all rodents they have a high reproductive rate and can breed rapidly in good seasons.

There is little to distinguish a lemming from a vole. Most lemmings are members of the tribe Lemmini (one of the three tribes that make up the subfamily).

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[edit] Population fluctuations

Lemming populations go through rapid growths and subsequent crashes that have entered popular consciousness as a supposedly "widespread" phenomenon, first noted in an encyclopaedia in 1908 but famously promulgated by the Walt Disney Pictures film, White Wilderness. White Wilderness depicted a mass suicide using staged footage of a dozen or so tame lemmings purposely driven into the sea. Based on this myth, the term "lemming" is often used in slang to denote those who mindlessly follow the crowd, even if destruction is the result.

In fact, the behavior of lemmings is much the same as that of many other rodents which have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter that their natural habitat cannot provide. The actual reason for their 'suicide' deaths is because lemmings have poor eyesight and cannot distinguish a small river, which they can easily cross, from a fjord, in which they will almost surely drown.[citation needed]

Stories about lemmings go back many centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was much speculation in learned circles that lemmings were in fact spontaneously generated by conditions of the air. This was argued against, successfully, by the natural historian Ole Worm, who provided one of the first published dissections of a lemming. In his investigation, Worm showed that a lemming contained anatomy similar to most other rodents.

The populations of predatory creatures like foxes and owls follow the population changes of lemmings and voles.

Lemmings of northern Norway are one of the only vertebrates who reproduce so quickly that their population fluctuations are chaotic[1], rather than following linear growth to a carrying capacity or regular oscilations. Chaos in population fluctuations only occurs (in theory) when each adult female is able to produce 2.7 or more living daughters per year.

[edit] Classification

[edit] Popular culture

  • The reputation of lemmings as mindless creatures who will unhesitatingly run off a cliff, heedless of the danger, is reflected in the popular series of video games, Lemmings.
  • In the 1980s interactive fiction computer game Crobe, there is a statue "To the unknown lemming" on a cliff edge. Unsurprisingly, the player needs to push it over the edge.
  • In the cartoon series The Tick, one of the superheroes named Captain Lemming blindly jumps off of rooftops.
  • The comedy TV series Red Dwarf makes numerous references and punchlines about lemmings. For example:

Rimmer : Maybe I should talk to him, I used to be in the Samaritans you know.
Lister : I know. For one morning.
Rimmer : I couldn't take any more.
Lister : I don't blame you. You spoke to five people, and they all committed suicide. I wouldn't mind, but one was a wrong number! He only phoned up for the cricket scores!
Rimmer : Well, it's hardly my fault that everyone chose that morning to throw themselves off buildings! Made the papers, you know. 'Lemming Sunday', they called it.

  • In the Disney movie Chicken Little, the dog reporter makes note of "a whole family of lemmings was sent running. But, unable to find a cliff, started hurling themselves off a park bench."
  • An episode of the television show Robot Chicken contains a skit entitled "The Lemming: Nature's Retard."
  • The video game GoldenEye 007 has "awards" given out at the end of a multiplayer round; one of these is called the "Lemming Award", which is given to the player with the most suicides.
  • In Dead Poet's Society, John Keating invites the boys to climb on his desk in file, remarking, "Break out! Don't just walk off the edge like lemmings, look around you!"
  • In the cartoon "Camp Lazlo," there are teal-colored lemming quadruplets.
  • In the French movie Lemming (2005), lemmings are seen in large quantities; invading a household through the sink.
  • The song I Like Giants by Kimya Dawson talks about lemmings on a cliff who wish to kill themselves;

So I talked to Geneviève and almost cried when she said
That the giant on the cliff wished that she was dead
And the lemmings on the cliff wished that they were dead
So the giant told the lemmings why they ought to live instead"

  • In one of Apple Computer's two Super Bowl ads, titled "Lemmings," people are seen dressed in business attire walking off a cliff before a voiceover suggests that they "look around" and use Macintosh Office.
  • On Random Insanity Online, there was an event where pushing a button on the boards page would cause you to be lowered to level 9, Lemming. Pushing the button again or following the link to "fix" you account would cause you to be lowered to level 8, Ultra Lemming.

[edit] External links

Look up Lemming in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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