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Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior
- mcpackieh 3y agoIt remains common practice for nature "documentaries" to create fake narratives in editing. Pay attention to cuts, camera angles and changes in background scenery and you'll notice quite a lot of it. If they're showing two animals in some sort of confrontation but only ever show one of the animals at a time, you can be sure it's fake. If they're showing something that has several camera angles it's probably fake, particularly if some of the camera angles are very close or in a position that should make the cameraman visible in the other angles. That popular video of a lizard running through a gauntlet of snakes is very fake. They probably spliced together many days of footage using captured lizards and snakes.
- stbenjam 3y agoI mean in an interview they’re claiming it’s real https://www.fastcompany.com/3068093/heres-the-story-behind-that-scary-iguana-vs-snakes-planet-earth-ii-clip https://www.fastcompany.com/3068093/heres-the-story-behind-t... It looks very convincing to me if it is a fake.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoIt's not fake as in CG or puppet snakes or a set or they dropped a bucket of snakes on an unsuspecting lizard, but video from different times spliced together to present a narrative that isn't what happened. Fake temporally at least. The producer has acknowledged this: "Unfortunately lizards, snakes and iguanas aren’t good at 'takes'." She continued: "For continuity, it was better to crop the scenes together based off of the two cameras we had at the time to create the best possible scene." https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/planet-earth-2-iguana-snakes-video-chase-faked-edited-controversy-a7789216.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/pla...
- kranke155 3y agoSergei Eisenstein’s montage theory should be basic teaching at school.
- micah94 3y agoAlso keep in mind many documentaries film in what are essentially zoos (large animal sanctuaries). Sometimes this is revealed in the show, but other times you have no idea. They get shots out in the serangheti but then cut back to a close-up of a cheetah inside a sanctuary.
- tshaddox 3y agoThe audio in nature documentaries is all fake too, right? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard this from a reliable source, but at some point years ago I got the idea in my head and now every time I’m watching on I’m convinced the vast majority of the sound effects are fake.
- kranke155 3y agoI work in film. I’d have to assume so, since the cameras are often very far using long telephoto lenses. Your definition of “fake” can be a lot of things as the team will record as much audio as they can of of the actual animal (I assume). But the final audio track is a bit like VFX in the visual side - you combine elements from all sources, your recordings, historical recordings, foley audio. Whatever it takes to get the desired effect in the audience.
- FireBeyond 3y agoI wonder. I tend to think so. But then I also think of things like the parabolic sideline microphones at football games and wonder how well they'd work with an amplifier.
- alteriority 3y agoYep! There was an episode of 99 Percent Invisible focusing on the sound design fakery in nature documentaries: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/ Coincidentally, it also features the very lemming story that brought us here.
- rqtwteye 3y agoI remember taking to a film maker at Yellowstone. He told me that you have a fixed amount of time and budget to get footage. If you don’t get everything you need, you fill with some other footage. That footage may be from previous projects or bought from somebody else. If they want to stay in business, they have to deliver a product.
- mc32 3y agoI hold out hope that Marty Stouffer’s Wild America didn’t make liberal use of those shenanigans in his original series.
- cratermoon 3y agoNor Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- phatfish 3y agoObviously not every behaviour can be captured in one take exactly in the way that will make an interesting film documentary. This is not some revelation. As long as the edited footage represents something that could plausibly (though maybe rarely) happen I see no issue. Personally I am happy to sit through a "drier" documentary if it is well made. But Planet Earth and the like are greatest hits type documentaries, designed to show the exceptional events and behaviours.
- nineteen999 3y agoIt even made it into a Donald Duck comic, "The Lemming with the Locket": http://duckcomicsrevue.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-lemming-with-locket.html http://duckcomicsrevue.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-lemming-with... Remember reading this one as a kid.
- eddyfromtheblok 3y agocongratulations to whomever amongst you who capitalized on this and initially created the Lemmings game for the Amiga
- DizzyDoo 3y agoI mean, it was Russell Kay[0], David Jones[1] and Mike Dailly[2], though I don't know if they're here. Personally I enjoyed the Lemmings Revolution game in the series, and that was much later than the Amiga version. [0] - https://www.mobygames.com/person/685/russell-kay/ https://www.mobygames.com/person/685/russell-kay/ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones_(video_game_developer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones_(video_game_develo... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Dailly_(game_designer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Dailly_(game_designer)
- PeterStuer 3y agoLemmings was a huge hit on any platform it was released on. I think I played it on the Mac at the time.
- looping8 3y agoAnd it has so many clones! I played at least 10 when I was younger with different animals or popular characters, same mechanics of having to save them before they die.
- pricci 3y ago> The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. I guess the 50s where different times
- PaywallBuster 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMZlr5Gf9yY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMZlr5Gf9yY
- iancmceachern 3y agoNot different times, they're still at it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- surge 3y agoYeah, you learn quickly in film school that documentaries edit footage however they like to tell a narrative. A lot of the incidents they describe happening in the wild are just multiple different situations clipped together, if you pay attention you'll notice some clips aren't even in the same place. There's even rumors recent footage of panicked animals were actually being caused by film crew drones, not anything happening naturally in the wild.
- peeters 3y agoI think the "different times" was referring more to the animal cruelty than the choice to stage a scene.
- iancmceachern 3y agohttps://www.disneydining.com/disney-world-animal-cruelty-charges-bb1/ https://www.disneydining.com/disney-world-animal-cruelty-cha...
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- erickhill 3y ago"Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. It's a myth, but it's remarkable how many people believe it." The sensational Amiga puzzle video game called "Lemmings" helped perpetuate the idea, too. :)
- yieldcrv 3y agoThe phrase of calling uncritical thinkers “lemmings” also helps entrench the idea
- eloisant 3y agodoesn't that come from the video game?
- dragonwriter 3y agoNo, it comes from the myth and predates the video game.
- smsm42 3y agoOne good thing that came out of this myth, at least. That game is awesome.
- jojobas 3y agoBut in the game the lemmings don't commit mass suicide, at least if the player is any good. Worst case, some lemmings are left behind for the common cause.
- Lio 3y agoYou can persuade the little tykes to blow themselves up pretty easily though.
- bennyelv 3y agoI’m convinced that some of the levels were deliberately unsolvable… get from one side of the screen to the other over a big chasm but you’ve got one exploding guy and one brick laying guy. Maybe if I tried to play it again I’d realise that it was my limited 10 year old mind after all!
- JKCalhoun 3y agoSaw this oddity on a wild film-loop projector when I was in Junior high school. If anyone remember's these (I remember them from the 1970's) they were the film equivalent of the 8-track tapeL: an endless loop of 8mm film (probably only 50 feet or so of film) in an odd chunky cartridge that you slammed into a small projector. I guess they were the analog version of TikTok. (Edit: appears they were called "Magi-Cartridge": https://youtu.be/tEshEHC78no?si=SaJk9aLkNUJpm-XK https://youtu.be/tEshEHC78no?si=SaJk9aLkNUJpm-XK)
- wly_cdgr 3y agoTIL that lemmings are a real animal
- cratermoon 3y agoWhen I was studying documentary methods in media studies, this was widely shared. There were (and are) many things calling themselves documentaries but are closer to entertaining simulations. The difference between what's allowed for popular media and what research professionals would accept is pretty wide.
- ClimaxGravely 3y agoThis reminds me when I found out the truth of a childhood movie of mine : Milo and Otis
- throwaway74093 3y agoCould you elaborate on that? From a superficial read on Wikipedia it appears the alleged abuses were denied by Japanese Humane Societies. >The Adventures of Milo and Otis ... is a 1986 Japanese[2] adventure comedy-drama film about two animals, Milo (an orange tabby cat) and Otis (a pug). >When the film was released, some animal welfare organizations alleged to have had a number of complaints from people who had seen the film and were concerned that it could not have been made without cruelty.[19] The Tasmanian and Victorian branches of the RSPCA also alleged abuse.[20] >The film was reported to have the approval of the American Humane Society.[19] The American Humane Association attempted to investigate cruelty rumors through "contacts in Europe who normally have information on movies throughout the world." While noting that the contacts had also heard the allegations, they were unable to verify them. The organization also reported, "We have tried through humane people in Japan, and through another Japanese producer to determine if these rumors are true, but everything has led to a dead end." The same report noted that several Japanese Humane Societies allowed their names to be used in connection with the film and that the film "shows no animals being injured or harmed."[4] [Source: Wikipedia]
- ClimaxGravely 3y agoThat's news to me! I'll see if I can find anything in Japanese. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
- totetsu 3y agoThey say its a Myth, but then >"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along the shore so dense and they will swim across. If they get wet to the skin, they 're essentially dead."
- optimalsolver 3y agoThat sounds like what wilderbeest do before crossing crocodile-infested waters. It's not suicide, they're just trying to get to other side and have no other options.
- somenameforme 3y agoThe scene may have been staged, but Wiki's entry on them suggests the demonstrated behavior is completely authentic, instead taking a more semantic argument about the term suicide: --- "Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide, in which animals voluntarily choose to die, but rather a result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. They can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many drown if the body of water is an ocean or is so wide as to exceed their physical capabilities. Thus, the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, and perhaps a small amount of semantic confusion (suicide not being limited to voluntary deliberation, but also the result of foolishness), helped give rise to the popular stereotype of the suicidal lemmings, particularly after this behaviour was staged in the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness in 1958.[12] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century. In the August 1877 issue of Popular Science Monthly, apparently suicidal lemmings are presumed to be swimming the Atlantic Ocean in search of the submerged continent of Lemuria.[13]" --- The Disney Film narrated the event (from the article) as, "A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny. That destiny is to jump into the ocean. As they approach the sea, they've become victims of an obsession -- a one-track thought: Move on! Move on!" That does not seem especially inaccurate. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming
- the_af 3y agoYeah, I was thinking that too. I guess Disney's real offense was picking the wrong subspecies of lemming (one that absolutely doesn't have this behavior) and forcibly dropping them off a cliff because the little creatures wouldn't play along otherwise. Pretty nasty.
- civilitty 3y ago[flagged]
- efitz 3y agoAs a child, I saw the Disney documentary numerous times (reruns on Sunday nights; there were only 3 TV channels). I believed the story into adulthood, having no reason to believe that Disney would fake a nature documentary.
- the_af 3y agoDisney is an extreme offender here (I mean, dropping lemmings off a cliff, what where they thinking?), but I hear some of what we "know" about animals is sometimes an honest mistake and may be the result of an involuntary artifacts of researcher involvement. Don't know if it's true, but a couple of examples I've read: It's not true that wolves live in "packs" and that there are alpha and beta males. In truth wolves form families of the breeding couple and their cubs, and that's it. Saying daddy and mommy wolf are the "alphas" is a trivial assertion. But apparently this dynamic is broken for wolves in captivity, and the artificial alpha/beta thing arises. Female praying mantises do not regularly chomp on the male's head while mating. It's true they are highly cannibalistic and will eat another mantis if they can, but while mating the males usually have tactics to avoid this fate; it's only under observation by researchers that the female gets more aggressive and the male less prone to escaping. Not sure if either is true, but I'm willing to entertain the notion they may be.
- consumer451 3y agoYes, the Alpha Wolf myth appears to be a very damaging slice of b.s. https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females.html https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females....
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoWhat is very damaging about it? Beyond facilitating A/B/O fan fiction, of course.
- namanyayg 3y agoThat people (usually males) believe this fanfiction also applies to human society and change their behaviours to be perceived as alpha
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoI don’t think many people would base their behaviour off wolves, parrots, gudgeons, mollusks or whatnot. That’s such a random species to choose. If anything, I would conjecture that the causality is actually in reverse: the ideas of pecking orders and dominance hierarchies were well-established in the scientific communities among zoologists and social psychologists (and even in common parlance), so people who studied wolves didn’t question external validity of their studies on captive wolves.
- PeterStuer 3y agoI remember walking the Norwegian mountain trails in late summer in a 'lemming year'. The lemming population explosion is so ridiculous you had to constantly look at your feet to avoid stepping on them, both live ones that sometimes puff their chests and make a big scene, as well as corpses littered all over the path.
- sizzle 3y agoSounds fascinating. Got any videos of this phenomenon for us to visualize the scene?
- whoopdedo 3y agoI've always suspected that the myth is due to the Bible. Mark 5:11-13 > Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. As noted, migrating lemmings will congregate at the edge of a cliff where some unfortunate clumsy ones will fall off. Someone seeing this would surely be reminded of the Bible passage and be tempted to imagine the creatures had been driven to suicide by demons.
- happytiger 3y agoSomeone should make a Disney movie about homocidal lemmings next and see if we can get that to stick too. Little gangs of lemmings throwing other lemmings into the sea. That would rule. Disney would be proud.
- pastrami_panda 3y agoI was hiking a summer when there was a 'lemming year'. You saw thousands of tiny carcasses strewn everywhere during that week, you accidently stepped on them as they ran under your hiking boots mid-step, if you sat down off trail they would start running up to you and attack. It was very surreal, they are very cute but also very fierce. Seeing a lemming run up to you and stand up on its hind legs and produce a high pitched shriek to intimidate you is something I'll never forget. Very strange animals.
- felurx 3y agoThe comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109510 has very similar content and is a few hours older than this one. Did you post the same thing under two usernames or something?
- pastrami_panda 3y agoI didn't see it, but everyone who has hiked during a lemming year has these types of stories about these crazy animals Edit: I read the comment you linked, the reason we have such similar language is because Swedes and Norwegians call it the same thing and I guess both of us were unsure if 'lemming year' is a widespread term :)
- PeterStuer 3y agoBelgian actually, but with Norwegian friends. :)
- Verdex 3y agoThe writing styles seem sufficiently different to me. Also the accounts were both made years ago and years apart. A much more likely and charitable interpretation of events is that 'lemming year' is an event that many people have experienced and the experience is sufficiently similar that you get accounts that sound the same. I mean, if multiple people described christmas morning to me, my first thought wouldn't be that they're all in actuality the same person.
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- ourmandave 3y agoIf I were a writer for the next Squid Games, I'd be toying with this concept.
- furyofantares 3y agoPretty weird to see a "debunking" of "bogus behavior" followed up with descriptions of actual behavior that's pretty dang close to my impression of what they did. I never heard of it or thought of it as suicide. It does sound like the Disney film, which almost none of the readers will have seen but a clip from, was totally fake and vile and was in fact bogus behavior in that it also wasn't even the right type of lemming. Everything about that sucks. But it also kinda sucks that most of the article misled me; it wasn't until the description at the end and then reading the wikipedia and accounts here that I reverted back to somewhere near the initial impression I had. Maybe I'm the weird one, and the popular idea really is about intentional suicide. But I always thought the popular idea was that sometimes large groups of them follow each other to their doom. I mean, I appreciate the added nuance that 1) they were probably gonna die if they stayed where they were to begin with, there's just too many of them and 2) it's more commonly a very deadly trek, not literally the whole group dying at once, though it sounds like that does happen sometimes [and I only ever had the impression that it happens sometimes].
- troyvit 3y agoIf you want to listen to a fun podcast that gets into this: https://www.goloudnow.com/podcasts/no-such-thing-as-a-fish-154/452-no-such-thing-as-lemming-atlantis-374017 https://www.goloudnow.com/podcasts/no-such-thing-as-a-fish-1...
- 40four 3y agoI love nature documentaries so much! They are beautiful, entertaining, and informative. But this makes me wonder how many other ideas have they have mislead me on? Do we need to worry about nature documentaries being a type of propaganda?
- wryoak 3y agoI think, generationally, we’ve reached a point where more people know this scene was staged than have actually seen it.