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".
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.
Are you now claiming to be the ultimate authority on academics and their interactions with 'paidleaf?
We have to talk about lemmings when we are talking about conscious human-like suicide because lemmings are the only animals that purportedly had conscious intentional suicides like human being. After all, the philosophical debate was "the difference between humans and animals". I actually brought up honey bees committing suicide ( once they sting, they die ). But the professor rejected it ( rightly so ) because it wasn't conscious and intentional suicide. For example, a parent storming a burning building to save their child and dying in the process isn't suicide in the human sense. A female octopus giving birth and dying isn't suicide.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/30/octopus-c...
A soldier going to war and dying isn't suicide. A mother bison trying to save her calf from predators and dying in the process isn't suicide. There is a difference between sacrifice and intentional conscious suicide where no one benefits.
> And your discussion sounds with your professor sounds really stupid
It wasn't. It was one of my favorite classes in college and hence why I decided to double major in philosophy. It was the first time I can say I really thought about something. If the class was "really stupid" it wouldn't have left such an indelible mark on me.
> he literally claimed to be the ultimate authority on lemmings?
Yes. He believed it was a fact just like the earth was a sphere is a fact. And ultimately, he is the one grading the term paper and he is the ultimate authority. Do you really expect a professor to back down on things he believe to be facts?
> An academic with a chair said that?
Yes. What's so surprising about that? Do you know what an academic with a chair is? An expert. Someone with authority.
> Sounds so unlikely I'm not sure I believe you.
Are you an "associate professor" by any chance? What is so unbelievable about it? Why are you so defensive?
It is already difficult for philosophy to avoid being grouped with dance, music and volleyball - academically speaking, and then someone makes it even more difficult by being silly.
Disclamer: as a physicist I classify philosophy together with the subjects mentioned earlier and I play volleyball a lot.
Oppressive teachers show me a wonderful thing: how complex the real world is as opposed to ideals. I also dislike them with a passion.
I found this entire episode fascinating, especially the part about Elephant footsteps being nearly silent in the real world.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding-ph...
Lemming suicide is also mentioned on page 66 of the first edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey: https://archive.org/stream/confessionsofeng00dequ_1#page/66/...
This was published in 1832 and revised in 1856.
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."
"the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation."
While xenocide is described as:
xenocide (plural xenocides)
The killing of a stranger or foreigner. (science fiction) The genocide of an entire alien species. (US, colloquial) The intentional killing of an entire foreign (plant or animal) species.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenocide
Either is fine really, just seems like a semantic curiosity.
The most important attribute for animal rights causes it seems. If Facebook campaigns are any measure...
How many species have gone extinct for purely natural reasons again?
Humans are a non-linear term in the equation, but the idea of an untouched and immutable nature is incorrect.
Even animals react to it. A live and let live attitude (if not one of protectiveness) towards harmless/cute living things is perfectly healthy it seems.
"Imma make lots of money from this"
https://youtu.be/huGJmQU4Piw?t=159
Notice how the jaguar can't move from that spot even with a bunch of large caiman right in front of it? It's almost like one of the jaguar's paws were pinned down to keep it in one spot. Wonder why? Could it be cameras were heavy and clunky contraptions back then that you could realistically focus on one area at a time? Can't capture jaguar footage if the jaguar is allowed to move out of frame. Or it was drugged so much that it had no idea what was going on.
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-docum...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams-apol...
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams...
"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
However, they don't kill the captive animals, which is the key difference.
Yet another black mark against Disney's attempts to make "nature more interesting" only to be just making up just so stories.
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.
Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.
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.
so... never played the Lemmings video game ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
