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1 Why Is It Called Black Friday?

Do Lemmings Really Commit Mass Suicide?  Actions 2 How Many Electoral College Votes Does Each U.S.
State Have?

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 3 What’s the Difference Between Alligators and
Crocodiles?

Lemmings are small creatures with wild reputations. In the 17th century, naturalists 4 Pro and Con: School Uniforms

perplexed by the habit of Norway lemmings to suddenly appear in large numbers, 5 Did Duchess Anastasia Survive Her Family’s
Execution?
seemingly out of nowhere, came to the conclusion that the animals were being
spontaneously generated in the sky and then falling to earth like rain. (The prosaic
truth is that they migrate in herds.) Some people also thought that lemmings explode
if they become sufficiently angry. This is also a myth, of course—lemmings are indeed
one of the more irascible rodents, but they mostly channel their rage into fights with
other lemmings. People probably came up with the notion of exploding lemmings 
after seeing the picked-over lemming carcasses that were left behind following a Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Patrick O'Neill
Riley
migration.

But there is one myth that has held on tenaciously: Every few years, herds of lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off
seaside cliffs. Instinct, it is said, drives them to kill themselves whenever their population becomes unsustainably large.

Lemmings do not commit suicide. However, this particular myth is based on some actual lemming behaviors. Lemmings
have large population booms every three or four years. When the concentration of lemmings becomes too high in one area, a
large group will set out in search of a new home. Lemmings can swim, so if they reach a water obstacle, such as a river or lake,
they may try to cross it. Inevitably, a few individuals drown. But it’s hardly suicide.

So why is the myth of mass lemming suicide so widely believed? For one, it provides an irresistible metaphor for human
behavior. Someone who blindly follows a crowd—maybe even toward catastrophe—is called a lemming. Over the past century,
the myth has been invoked to express modern anxieties about how individuality could be submerged and destroyed by mass
phenomena, such as political movements or consumer culture.

But the biggest reason the myth endures? Deliberate fraud. For the 1958 Disney nature film White Wilderness, filmmakers
eager for dramatic footage staged a lemming death plunge, pushing dozens of lemmings off a cliff while cameras were rolling.
The images—shocking at the time for what they seemed to show about the cruelty of nature and shocking now for what they
actually show about the cruelty of humans—convinced several generations of moviegoers that these little rodents do, in fact,
possess a bizarre instinct to destroy themselves.

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