There is no scientific evidence that these animals commit suicide. In fact, the film-makers contrived this scene (it was filmed in Canada and tame lemmings were pushed over a prop cliff into a river). The myth of thousands of lemmings - small Arctic vole-like rodents - hurling themselves over the cliffs of Norway was cemented in the popular imagination by a 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness. The amount of time men spend thinking about sex will vary hugely from individual to individual but is unlikely, except in the most hormone-ridden teenager, to be several times a minute. It certainly didn't arise from any serious psychological research. The myth is usually accompanied by the statement 'because women have to give birth', but of course no one knows how men would cope with this experience! The research that has been done on this actually suggests the opposite - that women feel hurt at a rather lower threshold than men. WOMEN HAVE A HIGHER PAIN THRESHOLD THAN MEN This would certainly be fast enough to give you a nasty bruise or cut, but it would not stand much chance of actually killing you. Thanks to air resistance, it is unlikely that a small coin dropped from any height would be able to exceed 30mph.
Lightning strikes many locations over and over again - high trees, tall buildings, mountain tops - and of course lightning conductors whose very purpose is to be struck time and time again.Ī PENNY DROPPED FROM A SKYSCRAPER WOULD KILL A PERSON LIGHTNING NEVER STRIKES IN THE SAME PLACE TWICEĪ strange myth because it is so demonstrably untrue. Here, the Mail's science editor dispels some of the most popular scientific misconceptions. The power of the media is truly awesome.Did you know that according to the laws of science, bumble bees are too big to fly?Īnd did you know that women can stand more pain than men? Well, perhaps you thought you knew.īut these so-called facts are, in reality, utter tosh - just two of the many 'urban myths' that blight our understanding of the world around us.
I can’t find any record of how many inoffensive lemmings were killed in order to film the sequence but it must rank as one of the most unethical events in movie-making history.Īnd over half a century later lemmings are still being used as a metaphor for senseless mass movements and many of the people using these metaphors are convinced that lemmings are suicidal animals. Here, a long way from the Arctic Ocean, he had his technicians construct a turntable which propelled the live lemmings off a convenient cliff past the camera lenses. The Disney director, unable to find any examples of lemmings committing suicide, had several hundred of them trapped in Hudson Bay and flown to Calgary in Alberta, where he was filming. The reality was revealed afterwards by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary called Cruel Camera. This has cemented into the public consciousness one of the most durable of wildlife myths. It’s very convincing and clips from it circulate on YouTube. The same film had a scene in which masses of lemmings committed suicide by jumping off a cliff into the Arctic Ocean. The 1958 film White Wilderness about arctic wildlife won the Oscar for best documentary feature. Big screen, techni-colour wildlife was a revelation in the days of early black-and-white television. I remember watching them as a small child with an interest in nature and they were truly wonderful.
In the 1950s the Disney Corporation decided to diversify its output of cartoon features and make wildlife documentaries. This widely held misconception is largely the fault of Walt Disney. They do not commit suicide by hurling themselves off cliffs into the ocean. Some die, often drowning while trying to cross rivers or other water bodies.
When this happens the rodents migrate, looking for fresh habitat.
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