10 Well Known Facts You Thought Were True (That Actually Aren't)

7. Lemmings Commit Mass Suicide

This is, of course, absolutely untrue, although it€™s such a common misconception that it€™s the subject of a video game and a figure of speech. People who don€™t even know what a lemming is will call you one if they consider that you€™re a follower rather than an individual, citing the animal€™s well-known propensity to form into a herd and run off cliffs. There€™s an irony in there somewhere. The truth is that lemmings have off-kilter fluctuations in local populations, reproducing chaotically. One year there will be virtually none, the next an area can be overrun with them. Population explosion in a lemming community leads to migration, the same as with many other grazing animals: the area they were living in simply can€™t sustain them any longer, and a biological urge will force them to leave. Such massive migrations, especially into areas that are unfamiliar to the migrating population, can occasionally mean that lemmings can fall from heights by accident. In addition to that, sometimes lemmings will have to cross bodies of water to get to where they want to be. It€™s likely that witnesses to a massed lemming migration saw hundreds of the tiny little blighters leaping without hesitation into the churning waters of a river or into the depths of a lake and thought that they were all killing themselves for some odd rodent reason. Lemmings can swim, so that€™s not the case. They€™re just busily on their way somewhere else to start a whole new life, and they won€™t let anything get in their way. Aggressive to predators, lemmings aren€™t mindless drones dropping off cliffs at the urging of the collective, but fiercely determined little suckers who will have your finger off as soon as looking at you. They wear brightly coloured fur as a deterrent to those who want to come and try eating them: not because their skin is poisonous, like certain frogs who do likewise, but because you literally do not want to mess with the lemming crew.