Lemmings: Not Really a Fan of the Whole Killing Themselves Thing

I’m not sure how I feel about Disney. They’ve got this weird thing for ducks, but man do they hate lemmings. I mean, they friggin’ murdered the poor bastards.

Omg, it's fat and cute.

I’ve never been one to care much about lemmings. Who would? They don’t really do anything interesting. They’re just fat little rodents. They’re kind of adorable, but they’re still just fat little rodents that don’t do anything. That being, it really is unfortunate that I spent my entire childhood thinking that lemmings were mentally handicapped mice whose only interests included foraging and mass suicide. Truth be told, however, that while it’s no doubt that these chubby little guys aren’t exactly the brightest, they still don’t blindly kill themselves en masse like I once thought. Admittedly, I’ve known that lemmings aren’t really a huge fan of  the whole suicide thing for quite a while, but I never knew that Disney was the blame for my childhood ignorance.

Apparently, back in 1958 people really sucked at filming nature documentaries. From what I’ve gathered it seems that the Disney documentary White Wilderness was shot over the course of three years. Along the way some guy was all like, “Yo, you know what’s nuts? These silly little rodents called lemmings run over cliffs and kill themselves. That shit is mad entertaining. Let’s film that.” Unfortunately, they never found any lemmings jumping to their deaths, so some asshole decided to take the matter into his own hands by first faking footage of lemmings migrating and then faking footage of lemmings killing themselves. This popularized the myth that every three or four years lemmings get extremely bored and decide to go throw themselves off a cliff for shits and giggles.

Now, I want you to watch this three minute long clip from White Wilderness. I want you to watch this clip with the full knowledge that these lemmings aren’t killing themselves unassisted.

Yeah, that’s right. This shit happened. Hell, this shit won an Academy Award.  Man, all I can think of when I watch this video is that there’s some fat guy pushing these things off that cliff with a stick. This is the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. The worst part of the video has to be the fact that it seems like the narrator is trying to talk you through it, “It’s okay guys, sometimes nature is just severally retarded. It’s not like we’re shoving them off the edge of this cliff or anything.”

Man, now I’m wicked sad. Thanks Disney. Thanks.

Turns out, Lemmings don’t murder themselves.

– Wayne!