Disney and Lemmings

[L. Schulte]

Of interest particularly to the Scandinavians here is an article on 
lemmings today in my local newspaper (Toledo Blade) and the hoax that 
Disney Studios invented in 1958 about mass suicide among lemmings.  The 
Disney film was produced as part of the "True Life Adventures" series, and 
remains fairly fixed despite exposés over the last 20 years about the 
hoax.  For some reason the producers thought lemmings occasionally 
committed mass suicide as a solution to over-population: the article states 
that at rare times lemmings in Norway migrate, and that at times some might 
be forced off cliffs or riverbanks during the migrations.  This apparently 
struck the film-makers as a great cinematic episode: they hired Alaskans to 
trap lemmings, then in Alberta, Canada they deliberately panicked the 
lemmings and filmed them running off a riverbank, then claimed this was a 
scene of the lemming mass suicide in Norway!
There is still a phrase in American English today "like lemmings to the 
sea" meaning people who mindlessly follow everyone else towards disaster.
Was there not also a Duck Tales episode about lemmings rushing to the sea? 
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