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Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they
commit mass suicide when they migrate. It is not a mass suicide, but the result
of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of
lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great.
In 1982, the CBC Television news magazine program The Fifth Estate broadcast a
documentary about animal cruelty in Hollywood, 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.
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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. The scene of lemmings leaping off a cliff in White
Wilderness was used as political metaphor in a campaign ad promoting Andrew
Monroe Rice, an Oklahoma candidate in the 2008 US Senate race.
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