Lemmings Aren't Suicidal After All

Thanks mainly to faked footage of migrating lemmings hurtling en masse over a cliff in the Oscar-winning 1958 Disney documentary 'White Wilderness,' it has been popularly believed for decades that the tiny arctic rodents have an inborn death wish — supposedly nature's way of thinning out the herd. Not so, say European researchers who recently completed a 15-year study of the creatures in their native habitat. The lemming population does wax and wane cyclically, the scientists confirmed, but the periodic dip in numbers is due to predators, not mass suicide.