![]() ![]() Why, then, are so many of us today willing to side with our executioners and join cause with those who openly seek our destruction? We are the people who have been the paragons of survival we were the meaning of God’s first message to Moses symbolizing His people – a burning bush which was not consumed. It’s remarkable that “the lemming effect” has made such tremendous inroads into contemporary Jewish life. Strangely enough though there is in fact a human parallel – an extremely odd human behavior identified by psychiatrists as “the lemming effect” with potentially dangerous and fatal consequences, and for many Jews today it has become a shared sickness. It was just a widely popular misconception based on a misunderstanding of lemming migrations. In spite of Walt Disney lending it credibility in his famous White Wilderness documentary and Apple making it unforgettable in its 1985 Super Bowl commercial “ Lemmings ”, nature isn’t that stupid. ![]() It is amazing what one film can do to give a whole species a bad rap.Yes, lemmings do exist – but it turns out that the story about their inexplicable habit of committing mass suicide by collectively jumping off a cliff is nothing but an urban myth. Even with many factors against them, it is would not be in the best interests of species survival for hundreds of lemmings to kill themselves for no particular reason. Population density has also increased, causing much more competition for resources in a small area. Warmer and more humid climates cause their natural environment to shrink and resources to become scarcer. Climate change is also affecting lemming populations as well. This generates the appearance that the lemmings died horrifically en masse. However, the raven, a natural predator of the Lemming, tends to kill but not fully eat the lemmings a few months after lemmings reproduce. Many Lemming corpses have also been found in a small area at once, perhaps adding to the myth. It is easy for a lemming population to consume all the resources in an environment due to their mass numbers and tendency to feed on almost all vegetation. Lemmings do in fact migrate en masse, but it is only to find a new home after their previous one became overpopulated or stripped of resources. The myth mostly came to fruition because of Disney, however, it could possibly be based off of some real Lemming behavior. Therefore the whole film was probably depicting false information. Not only is the behavior depicted in the film of the Lemmings wrong, but the movie was made in Alberta, Canada, where no lemmings naturally live. According to Disney, every few years hundreds of lemmings gather to migrate to cliffs to summarily jump off and kill themselves. In the film, lemmings are shown jumping off a cliff in mass quantities. In 1958, the film “White Wilderness” was published by Disney as part of their “True Life Adventure” series. One may ask where this saying originated. They are fairly small with a body length of 10-22cm and are made the subject of a common saying in the English language about someone who would follow a crowd anywhere or do anything. They are in the same family of mice, rats, and gerbils. Lemmings ( Lemmus lemmus) are small rodents that live in the artic environment of Northern Canada and other artic biomes. ![]()
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