Disney lied to the world in a 1958 nature documentary

We all know Hollywood is about as honest as the Bros. Cuomo, but this story is really weird. It's about lemmings.

Lemmings are cute little rodents that live on the arctic tundras. There is an enduring myth that lemmings commit mass suicide. Why?
The theory is that they instinctively know when the herd is over-populated, so a large number of the herd will sacrifice themselves for the greater good. How? They run off a seaside cliff and drown themselves. Interesting, but total nonsense!



In 1958, Disney Studios produced a nature documentary called White Wilderness. The film showed a supposed lemming mass suicide.

It took a while, but animal rights proponents uncovered the cruelty behind White Wilderness.
From wiki:
In 1982, the CBC Television news magazine program The Fifth Estate broadcast a documentary about animal cruelty in Hollywood called "Cruel Camera", focusing on White Wilderness as well as the television program Wild Kingdom. Bob McKeown, the host of the CBC program, found that the lemming scene was filmed at the Bow River near downtown Calgary and not at the Arctic Ocean as implied by the film. He found out that the lemmings did not voluntarily jump into the river but were pushed in by a rotating platform installed by the film crew. He also interviewed a lemming expert who claimed that the particular species of lemming shown in the film is not known to migrate, much less commit mass suicide. He also discovered that footage of a polar bear cub falling down an Arctic ice slope was really filmed in a Calgary film studio. Source

When outraged people heard about the lemming mass-murder and screamed for Walt Disney's head, his p.r. people said the documentary crew did it without Walt's knowledge, as he would never approve of such an atrocity. Good damage control.

Back in the 1990s, the controversy arose again, with some die-hard Disney fans still doubting their beloved Disney could do such a thing.
So Snopes checked it out.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Yeah but try to explain this to someone and you're a nut. Everyone knows lemmings do that!

There's even a game about it called Lemmings I got to play when I was a kid. You need to navigate them by selecting a lemming and give it special powers. Like digging, stair building, stoppers and such. The goal was to get as most as you can to a dedicated area where they would walk in and fell out of a trap door the next level. Stop them from walking into traps, holes in the ground or water.


www.qwant.com...=lemmings+game&t=images

Looking at it makes me think about if the WORMS game was inspired by it. A turn based game where little worms have weapons and the landscape is affected too. If someone has played this game, I am in for a round of WA (Worms Armageddon) just pm me.

Well there goes that metaphor. It has served me well.

And them sunza beetches try to make me feel bad for shooting Bambi (and his father and mother)???

a reply to: ThatDamnDuckAgain
There is a lemming game app it's pretty fun still

a reply to: 5ofineed5aladder
Played it a lot, it was always like "just this level and then I quit". But cool levels kept coming so I kept mastering them. Lemmings and HubbaBubba type: fancy fruit, I can almost smell it now

a reply to: ColeYounger

lemmings did not voluntarily jump into the river but were pushed in by a rotating platform installed by the film crew.

Nah, wasn't even as lofty as that. It was just a record player. They'd literally just toss them on there. I remember seeing some behind the scenes footage of it some time.

Kind of like that recent Attenborough film where walruses were scared off a cliff by the film crew's drones.

a reply to: Flatcoat

Remember the animal vs animal series? A collection of DVDs and before that, tape, that were like

"bear vs wolf"

or maybe even obvious staged and enforced duels like

"icebear vs kangaroo"

I didn't watch those but I noticed the fuss around these because a classmates father had the full collection and it was all the rage for some boys in class. I found it to be disgusting, from the re-tellings alone.

Roman Empire lives on...


I remember an underwater shot of a Capybara swimming in the Amazon and getting eaten by Piranha. I always wondered if they dumped the poor thing in the river for that.

The sad fact is...

We were all lemmings, believing the Hollywood lie...

It's par for the course, really...

That is such a strange thing to do, why would they do that? Why make this lemming suicide lie in the first place, was it to push an agenda?

All just training for the future...


Let’s Go!