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Lemming Population Flux Solved: Mass Suicide Not to Blame

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the games-to-stand-as-is dept.

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."

2 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gee. by Jodaxia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess whoever did this study failed their first ecology course in college.

    Almost every ecology teacher beats several key things into your heads.
    1. Survival of the fittest
    in other words an individual does not do something for the benifit of the species, mainly due to the fact that doing so diverts energy that could be used to producing more young so that their genes survive. The individual will do things to benifit their genes, but not for unrelated individuals of the same species. Social species do have some altruistic behaviours, but their communities are generally made up of individuals that are related. However these altruistic behaviors do not include suicide.

    2. The lynx and Hare.
    Classic example of what is going on with the lemmings here. As the hare population increases there is more food for the lynx, thus more offspring are produced. As the lynx population increases there are fewer hare to eat and the lynx population declines, and so on.

    So this study on lemmings is not surprising, actually I'm quite shocked that someone didn't figure it out sooner.

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    crowbar??
  2. Re:Suicide theory is a fraud! by vidarh · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I think you can safely assume that Disney treated a lot of their "documentaries" as they would any fiction: Write the script, and go out and film the scenes. And when you expect to follow a script and nature starts being difficult, they did what they could with the same persistence as they'd fake weather or scenery for any other movie.

    I guess they thought it was only the end product that mattered.