Lemming Population Flux Solved: Mass Suicide Not to Blame

quogmire writes "Australia's ABC reports that biologists from the Universities of Finland and Freiburg (Germany) have finally solved the question of lemming population fluctuations once thought to be caused by lemmings mass-suiciding by plunging off cliffs. 'Lemming populations, they say, surge spectacularly and fall just as quickly, thanks to the combined feasting of four predators: the stoat, arctic fox, snowy owl and a seabird called the long-tailed skua.' The original article (Login required) is published in Science."

Comments

Re:"Computer Lemmings"? You mean Windows users?

[BigDish]

No, actually I meant Apple users. As bad as Windows users are, Mac users are 100 times worse about immediately running out and buying the latest upgrade. Jobs is god!.

Re:Suicider Lemmings And Bomber Blemmings ...

[fucksl4shd0t]

But killing of innocents isn't perfectly understandable.

Exactly how are the victims innocent? Not once has a terrorist group struck another group of people without believing them to be guilty. How is your sense or morality so superior that it overrides their judgement? In the case of Israel, well, the Israelies are living on land that was previously controlled by the dominant culture in the area. The land was forced clear by Western nations having some sort of guilt complex over Hitler's extermination program. Great. So we take all these Jews that were going to be murdered by Nazis and place them in their traditional home (Israel), simultaneously suurounding them by a culture that would like nothing more than to annihilate them. Can you say, out of the frying pan, into the fire?

Of course, the population that lives at the expense of this particular situation, and the republic officials elected by this population are guilty as well. Just like the man who pays the assassin is guilty of the murder.

Whether these people (suicide bombers) are making the right decision is dependent on their own individual world view and morality, usually instilled on them by the culture around them. Whether the dominant world view wants them to live in this world is entirely a different matter. The nice thing about suicide bombers, though, is that they will sooner or later remove themselves from this world and cease to be a threat.