Today’s BC strip invokes the myth, prompting one commenter to use Snopes as a source to claim that the myth originated with the White Wilderness “documentary”. This, of course, is not true.
Wikipedia mentions the use in a 1951 short story but surely there are earlier instances. I’m wondering when’s the earliest this was in use, at least in print. Any ideas?
I can find newspaper articles as early as 1900 describing the lemmings’ migration and subsequent drownings in water. The also use the term “suicide.”
Although it’s only a one-line mention at the very end, here’s Cecil’s column mentioning it.
Nitpick: Column actually by erstwhile staffer extraordinaire Doug Yanega.
Interesting. Thanks!
The way I understand it, the documentarians believed it really happened, and that’s why they faked it, after having hoped they could make it happen spontaneously and failed.
As Snopes says, faking stuff for nature documentaries was not uncommon, and most of the other films by Disney were faked, too.
That article doesn’t mention suicide though, it just describes the actual sight of massing lemmings in an exceptional lemming year.