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Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior
- lintroller 8y agoThis is covered in the 99% Invisible podcast episode 256 Sounds Natural - https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/ I found this entire episode fascinating, especially the part about Elephant footsteps being nearly silent in the real world.
- mywacaday 8y agoI was lucky enough to have an elephant ride through the jungle in Thailand, can confirm that they are almost silent, only noise is the brush being pushed to one side on a path just wide enough for a person to walk. Amazing animals.
- sleepychu 8y agohttps://www.thedodo.com/elephant-rides-trek-1132645600.html https://www.thedodo.com/elephant-rides-trek-1132645600.html :-(
- chris_overseas 8y agoNot so lucky for the elephant though I'm afraid to say[1] :( The best way to experience elephants is on safari, where you can get close to truly wild elephants in their natural environment - something that to me at least feels much more rewarding than riding one in captivity. With a well chosen safari the fees you pay will be going to local guides and helping support and protect the animals too. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding-phuket-bali-chiang-mai-koh-samui-rides-sanctuary-nature-park-ethics-intrepid-travel-a7185061.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding-ph...
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y agoThere are conservation parks, which to my surprise still let you do a limited amount of riding (as you wash them in the river) but are supposed to be rescuing elephants from mistreatment elsewhere. The riding is presumably offered as a way of funding the place (particularly given how much the elephants eat). So depending on where you go it may not be entirely terrible.
- mywacaday 8y agoHave to admit I'm torn about the whole issue. Animals in the wild are amazing but how may people can go see elephants in the wild. I recently brought my son to a dolphin show, while he has a new appreciation keeping intelligent animals in a tank that would normally roam over 1000s of KMs really bothers me.
- corobo 8y agoWith new technology such as VR, live streams, television, photographs there has to be a better way to do this rather than holding them in captivity
- bretthoerner 8y agoYou should watch The Cove (2009).
- IshKebab 8y agoThere should be a list of commonly known facts that people who are new to the internet have to read so they don't think things like this are novel.
- CodesInChaos 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth: > Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century.
- bcohen5055 8y agoThanks for this list.. you have killed my productivity this afternoon.
- shkkmo 8y agoThis is one of my favorite wikipedia pages. I'm not aware of any other resource that does so much to fix our broken epistemology.
- otakucode 8y agoThat's not epistemology... epistemology is about the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable. I think you mean 'common sense.' Though nowadays always spoken of positively, originally 'common sense' referred to the sense of commoners, being incomplete and unreasoned and just an accumulation of happenstance. That's pretty much what common misconceptions are.
- shkkmo 8y ago
- TulliusCicero 8y agoI'm glad we had the myth for a bit, if only for the game.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoAn entire genre of adventure game, reduced to simple entertainment. :-) Yet another black mark against Disney's attempts to make "nature more interesting" only to be just making up just so stories.
- ebbv 8y agoAdventure game? Always thought of it as a puzzle game.
- barking 8y agoTerriers stay small because they're given whiskey as pups and the way to catch a bird is to throw salt on its tail are two other childhood facts that I find hard to completely give up.
- cup-of-tea 8y agoThere's a great short story by Arthur C. Clarke about lemmings, but he does admit in a later foreword that the premise is actually a myth.
- rmetzler 8y ago"White Wilderness" snippet - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM
- dmix 8y agoWhich is interestingly the 2nd highest ranked video when you search "lemmings" on Youtube...
- sgillen 8y agoDisney popularized the myth, but I think it was around before them. I think they wanted to get video of those famous/interesting lemming suicides but the lemmings wouldn't do it, so they coerced them into it.
- paulie_a 8y agoTldr: Disney committed lemming genocide
- freeflight 8y agoWhy the downvotes? From White Wilderness, as the movie shows drowning Lemmings, put there by Disney employees, the narrator goes: "And so is acted out, the legend of mass suicide and destruction of a species." https://youtu.be/xMZlr5Gf9yY?t=2m50s https://youtu.be/xMZlr5Gf9yY?t=2m50s
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nck4222 8y ago>Why the downvotes? Probably because it's inaccurate/exaggerated in a couple ways. 1. Genocide refers to humans, not animals, and requires the act to be targeted at a group of people that share some sort of traits (typically race, or cultural identity). 2. Disney imported "no more than a few dozen lemmings," which doesn't really meet the numbers the word typically is used for. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness/ Disney killed lemmings, and unless they attempted to wipe out all lemmings that share a particular cultural identity, it's probably pretty insensitive to use it in this context.
- workinthehead 8y agoGenocide is by definition against a group having common genetic/ethnic identity. One might also consider that animals are people, too. However, I don't think you can make the case that Disney set out to wipe lemmings from the earthwe.
- ibdf 8y agoWait.. is the game based on this same fictional fact?
- mlindner 8y agoYes, but it existed before the game or Disney were around.
- csours 8y agoIt took me a while to realize that you were saying that the myth was around before the game and Disney. For some reason I thought you meant the game was around before Disney.
- whatshisface 8y agoYou thought that because the last (parent's) sentence was talking about the game, and "it" tends to refer to the last noun that was talked about.
- cortesoft 8y agoWouldn't the last noun be 'the fictional fact'?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bredren 8y agoNot that different from the concept of a clown. The very existence of their sadness and aimless being should lift our spirts.
- deltateam 8y agoupon reading the whole article, it is mostly true. "mass dispersal" occurs when the population grows too much and the food runs out, sometimes it can be very directional, and sometimes they will pile up on the shore until they gets too packed and they try to swim across frigid waters. the Disney mass suicide documentary says this can be observed every 7 - 10 years, and then they over dramatized how it looks edit: removed blue planet reference, peace! edit2: alright folks, what is inaccurate or disagreeable about what I wrote? I'm downvoted so far that I can't even post a rebuttal anymore and have zero feedback about how I read the Alaska Government's article incorrectly
- gowld 8y agoBlue Planet is not filming captive animals in faked environments doing unnatural behaviors.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoSome of Blue Planet was filmed in aquariums. It's an open secret that David Attenborough documentaries use footage of captive animals to create a narrative. However, they don't kill the captive animals, which is the key difference.
- soperj 8y agoYou will now be downvoted more for talking about the downvoting.
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y agoThat's pretty much what I got out of it. Occasionally lemmings will engage in, "mass dispersal" in a single direction... Which sometimes brings the group to a river crossing... Which once in a blue moon ends in mass death. Certainly the truth is radically different than what was portrayed but it was rooted in some truth. That said, killing a bunch of animals that were children's pets only days before to fake some dubious folk legend is fucking psychotic.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ModernMech 8y agoOh wow, this brings me back. I did a report in 6th grade about this, and had to try really hard to convince all my friend the lemmings game lied to them. I remember typing it on an electric typewriter.
- IncRnd 8y agoDisney is a money-many endeavor that sometimes cuts corners and spreads untruths. I'm not against making money, just against those who would lie and defraud others to make more of it. Businessinsider.com has a page that shows four that Disney apologized about or said were untrue. [1] In the same way, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and others were believed to be great reporters, even though they created their own sensationalized fake news to get ratings. One of the items from Rather was called "Fake but Accurate" by Rather. "The New York Times' headline report on this interview, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate," created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS's broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS's news division." [2] One of Williams stories about being in a flaming plane that was shot down was debunked by the soldiers who were in the plane with him, the plane that was unhit and unlit. Williams later apologized, saying he didn't "know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another." [3] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-channels-fake-documentaries-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-channels-fake-docum... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy [3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams-apologizes-false-iraq-war-story https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams-apol...
- laken 8y agoRe: Brian Williams - many leading memory scientists say that Brain Williams didn't sensationalize his story, but rather created a false memory over time. There's a lot of evidence of this, and 10+ years is a long time in terms of memory and you will start combining multiple people's stories in your own recollection. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams-a-victim-of-false-memory/ https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams...
- forkLding 8y agoTalk about unnecessary cruelty, lemmings are quite cute creatures, can't imagine what was going thru their heads ("the Disney filmmakers") when they threw all those lemmings off a cliff to their deaths for a film.
- afterburner 8y agoThis'll look good! And it's what management expects!
- dmix 8y ago> lemmings are quite cute creatures The most important attribute for animal rights causes it seems. If Facebook campaigns are any measure...
- cnasc 8y agoI had an environmental ethics professor in college. Her pet cause was the plight of the atlantic bluefin tuna. She frequently lamented that only the cute animals get any real support.
- biztos 8y agoAnd yet we eat both bunnies (cute) and pigs (arguably not cute). Fish, though, yeah, they're not getting any cuteness bonus. Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture. I have recently, and irrationally, stopped eating octopus because they're so smart. Maybe some viral videos of tuna doing amazing things would help...
- codycraven 8y agoOnly you can prevent blob fish hatred.
- rusk 8y ago> and pigs (arguably not cute). Ah come on![0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJgCDBx2bU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJgCDBx2bU EDIT: P.S. > Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture. I try not to eat Salmon; it's pretty much always farmed, often in ugly conditions which is a travesty for such a noble creature.
- weeksie 8y agoIf any entertainment company is known for taking old myths and putting a new family-friendly shine on 'em it's Disney!
- aaron695 8y agoThe funny thing is David Attenborough docos are horrifically anti science. Basically just nature porn. But the previous yard stick was doco's that Disney was making, way, way worse, so the BBC got more credit, it changed the game. But the whole population doesn't need to understand nature and most people agree we need to preserve nature where ever possible so there's still value in the Planet series etc, but it scary how many biologists/scientists believe it.
- vivekd 8y agoJust a few days ago on hn I discovered the stanford prison expweiment was largely faked, and now this. I guess this is good reason to be suspicious of pop science factoids that often get thrown around in discussions.
- danschumann 8y agoI'm still mad at the discovery channel for convincing me that Megaladon was still out there.
- mchahn 8y agoAnd myth explanations spawn more myths. I had read (forgot the source) that it was a myth and that the lemmings were really jumping off cliffs to swim to an island people weren't generally aware of. Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.
- sopooneo 8y agoDisney seemed as determined to create a dark analogy as the Standford Prison guy.
- zmix 8y agoEven more childhood dreams destroyed. Fuck Micky Mouse!
- Nadya 8y agoThis is triply interesting for me because I had never heard of this myth and, reading the comments, I appear the be the only one out of the loop on the myth itself or the game. I wonder how many other pop-sci myths I'm unaware of.
- matt-attack 8y agoCurious if you’ve heard of someone being called a “lemming” meaning they’re easily coerced or will follow a leader blindly.
- rusk 8y agoOnly ever heard someone be called a "lemon" which was I presumed because they were so winsome they made you purse up your mouth like you'd just tasted lemon.
- Klover 8y agoCongratulations on being one of today’s lucky ten thousand then! I found this podcast here in the comments for more such things, called “99% Invisible” apparently elephants walk surprisingly silently instead of the thunderous stomping in the cinema.
- jcelerier 8y ago> I had never heard of this myth so... never played the Lemmings video game ?
- Keverw 8y agoOh wow, they killed animals just to make a film? I am a Disney fan but never knew about this. Disappointed. I would think modern Disney probably is much better than that nowadays. I think nothing like this would happen today thanks to CGI.
- GhostVII 8y agoIf you are OK with eating meat, you should be OK with killing animals for a movie, in my opinion. When you eat a steak, you could eat potatoes or something instead, but you choose to eat an animal because you like how it tastes. I don't see that as any different from killing animals for a movie, in both cases you are unnecessarily killing an animal for your enjoyment.
- Keverw 8y agoWell when you eat a animal, you are doing it because eating is necessary, and some people are picky eaters conditioned to like meat since childhood. But I feel like killing them for a movie is a waste, unless they are eaten later maybe but still not too much better. Like if you kill a animal, you should try to use every single part of it as possible. Same thing the Native Americans believe.
- _pmf_ 8y agoNature documentaries are laboriously produced works of fiction.
- ainiriand 8y agoLike any other form of art, it tells you a lie to speak the truth.
- kartan 8y agoThis is not my personal experience. Lemmings are fearless creatures that will scream to any animal, including humans, that cross their path. I have seen a Lemmings confronting a crow. The crow sends the lemmings flying on three different occasions until it took the lemming dead body and left flying. The lemmings never tried to run or hide, it just was screaming at the crow until its very last moments. So I can see that "mass suicide" is a myth. But it has some true on it looking at the lemmings' behaviour.
- paidleaf 8y agoI had a huge argument with my philosophy professor about this. Our class was discussing the distinguishing characteristics between humans and animals. Someone brought up humans commit suicide while animals don't. The professor claimed that was false and brought up lemmings as evidence. I chimed in that lemming suicides were most likely myth and even if it was real, we shouldn't accept the idea of lemming suicides until we have definitive proof. He claimed lemming suicides were established fact and that if I or anyone rejected the idea in our papers on the topic, we'd be penalized for positing a factually incorrect statement. A bit of back and forth later, he said he was the ultimate authority on the topic and ended the discussion. Naturally, in my paper, I wrote that lemming suicides were likely myth ( with sources ) and naturally I got penalized. I still remember it years later and whenever the topic of lemming suicides come up, I make it my business to correct people. Years from now, on my death bed, my last words will be "lemming suicide is a myth".
- jordigh 8y agoI must enlighten the masses! https://jordi.platinum.edu.pl/piccies/enlighten-them.jpg https://jordi.platinum.edu.pl/piccies/enlighten-them.jpg
- mlrtime 8y agoSomewhere out there, that professor finally read evidence that there is no lemming suicides and now regrets everyday for penalizing you. At least that is how it is playing out in my head.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chrisseaton 8y agoBut lots of animals commit suicide. You don't need to talk about lemmings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autothysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autothysis And your discussion sounds with your professor sounds really stupid - he literally claimed to be the ultimate authority on lemmings? An academic with a chair said that? Sounds so unlikely I'm not sure I believe you.
- alehul 8y agoSo do we know whether Disney actually killed lemmings for a film? There's some people claiming that 'most survived' and others accepting that they were killed. While I'm not much of an animal rights activist, killing animals relatively ethically in medical research seems like a far cry from tossing lemmings off of cliffs.
- antientropic 8y agoIn unrelated news, 500 sheep killed themselves by jumping off a cliff in Turkey: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/500-sheep-die-in-mass-suicide-jump-in-eastern-turkey-133225 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/500-sheep-die-in-mass-suici...