Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-37553158-20191113030504/@comment-37443679-20191122161630

Alzhammer wrote:

So to anyone who is familiar with lemming behavior, do you know if they actually are known to stampede down cliffs (or whatever) to their ultimate death? Disney was a showman. They don't commit mass suicide.

We learned in Ecology that lemmings have substantial swings in their population. The principal factors are climate, food resources and predation, but the effects on lemmings are dramatic. In a so-called 'lemming year' you can see dozens of the silly things running around here at the cabin (around 850 m.) They are really pissy little beasts, a challenge for the cats.

The Wikipedia article explains it briefly. The interesting thing is the effect on populations of birds like grouse and ptarmigan. Because the foxes, owls and eagles get tons of tasty lemmings, they leave the chicks alone, so the hunters are delighted with the large numbers of birds in the autumn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_lemming