I was lucky enough to have an elephant ride through the jungle in Thailand, can confirm that they are almost silent, only noise is the brush being pushed to one side on a path just wide enough for a person to walk. Amazing animals.
Not so lucky for the elephant though I'm afraid to say[1] :( The best way to experience elephants is on safari, where you can get close to truly wild elephants in their natural environment - something that to me at least feels much more rewarding than riding one in captivity. With a well chosen safari the fees you pay will be going to local guides and helping support and protect the animals too.
There are conservation parks, which to my surprise still let you do a limited amount of riding (as you wash them in the river) but are supposed to be rescuing elephants from mistreatment elsewhere. The riding is presumably offered as a way of funding the place (particularly given how much the elephants eat). So depending on where you go it may not be entirely terrible.
Have to admit I'm torn about the whole issue.
Animals in the wild are amazing but how may people can go see elephants in the wild. I recently brought my son to a dolphin show, while he has a new appreciation keeping intelligent animals in a tank that would normally roam over 1000s of KMs really bothers me.
Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth:
> Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century.
That's not epistemology... epistemology is about the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable. I think you mean 'common sense.' Though nowadays always spoken of positively, originally 'common sense' referred to the sense of commoners, being incomplete and unreasoned and just an accumulation of happenstance. That's pretty much what common misconceptions are.
I know what epistemology is, but apparently you don't. "the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable" is not epistemology but metaphysics. Epistemology may dip into metaphysics, (and vice-versa) but they are generally distinct fields.
By "our broken epistemology" I mean "our broken methodologies of evaluating the truth of our beliefs and the certainty of our knowledge". The brokenness of our practical epistemology is why these common misconceptions not only exist, but continue to dominate.
I could have been more precise and said "our broken epistemological systems",
Terriers stay small because they're given whiskey as pups and the way to catch a bird is to throw salt on its tail are two other childhood facts that I find hard to completely give up.
Disney popularized the myth, but I think it was around before them. I think they wanted to get video of those famous/interesting lemming suicides but the lemmings wouldn't do it, so they coerced them into it.
Probably because it's inaccurate/exaggerated in a couple ways.
1. Genocide refers to humans, not animals, and requires the act to be targeted at a group of people that share some sort of traits (typically race, or cultural identity).
2. Disney imported "no more than a few dozen lemmings," which doesn't really meet the numbers the word typically is used for.
Disney killed lemmings, and unless they attempted to wipe out all lemmings that share a particular cultural identity, it's probably pretty insensitive to use it in this context.
Wouldn't xenocide be a more apt description? A quick search for genocide gives the definition of:
"the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation."
While xenocide is described as:
xenocide (plural xenocides)
The killing of a stranger or foreigner.
(science fiction)
The genocide of an entire alien species.
(US, colloquial)
The intentional killing of an entire foreign (plant or animal) species.
He did specify “lemming” genocide, but more to the point, I don’t think Disney killed enough lemmings for it to matter. They aren’t an endangered animal, since they seem to be thriving with a diversity of species occupying niches across the globe, and most species being marked as least concern.
Genocide or xenocide would carry the meaning that the very animal (or even a single species) was brought to the brink of extinction, thereby threatening the genome of the animal. Hence “gene”-o-cide.
Disney didn’t even encourage abuse or mischief among viewers. So, the comment doesn’t really make sense. No one tried to kill a real live lemming, or coax them off a cliff. The mysterious allegedly suicidal behavior wasn’t a call to action, to change lemmings or their behavioral patterns.
Why? Genocide is by derivation the killing or wiping out of a genetic population. Why can’t that be applied to purposeful extinction of an animal species?
It took me a while to realize that you were saying that the myth was around before the game and Disney. For some reason I thought you meant the game was around before Disney.
upon reading the whole article, it is mostly true.
"mass dispersal" occurs when the population grows too much and the food runs out, sometimes it can be very directional, and sometimes they will pile up on the shore until they gets too packed and they try to swim across frigid waters.
the Disney mass suicide documentary says this can be observed every 7 - 10 years, and then they over dramatized how it looks
edit: removed blue planet reference, peace!
edit2: alright folks, what is inaccurate or disagreeable about what I wrote? I'm downvoted so far that I can't even post a rebuttal anymore and have zero feedback about how I read the Alaska Government's article incorrectly
Some of Blue Planet was filmed in aquariums. It's an open secret that David Attenborough documentaries use footage of captive animals to create a narrative.
However, they don't kill the captive animals, which is the key difference.
That's pretty much what I got out of it. Occasionally lemmings will engage in, "mass dispersal" in a single direction... Which sometimes brings the group to a river crossing... Which once in a blue moon ends in mass death. Certainly the truth is radically different than what was portrayed but it was rooted in some truth. That said, killing a bunch of animals that were children's pets only days before to fake some dubious folk legend is fucking psychotic.
Suicide is deliberate. Any unfortunate death due to overcrowding attributed to suicide is simply false. There is no evidence of intentional death or racing towards a cliff, merely that when faced with no other apparent route of escape, they have a great chance of dying when trying to cross a body of frigid water. That's entirely different from the portrayal by Disney and the associated myth.
I’ve never seen the Disney “documentary”, but then I’ve heard this myth many times before. And never, not once, is suicide meant as intentional, but rather that they’d just follow the leader off a cliff or something. Like the ants that can be made to walk in a circle forever (also a myth).
Oh wow, this brings me back. I did a report in 6th grade about this, and had to try really hard to convince all my friend the lemmings game lied to them. I remember typing it on an electric typewriter.
Disney is a money-many endeavor that sometimes cuts corners and spreads untruths. I'm not against making money, just against those who would lie and defraud others to make more of it.
Businessinsider.com has a page that shows four that Disney apologized about or said were untrue. [1]
In the same way, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and others were believed to be great reporters, even though they created their own sensationalized fake news to get ratings.
One of the items from Rather was called "Fake but Accurate" by Rather. "The New York Times' headline report on this interview, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate," created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS's broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS's news division." [2]
One of Williams stories about being in a flaming plane that was shot down was debunked by the soldiers who were in the plane with him, the plane that was unhit and unlit. Williams later apologized, saying he didn't "know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another." [3]
Re: Brian Williams - many leading memory scientists say that Brain Williams didn't sensationalize his story, but rather created a false memory over time. There's a lot of evidence of this, and 10+ years is a long time in terms of memory and you will start combining multiple people's stories in your own recollection.
Talk about unnecessary cruelty, lemmings are quite cute creatures, can't imagine what was going thru their heads ("the Disney filmmakers") when they threw all those lemmings off a cliff to their deaths for a film.
I had an environmental ethics professor in college. Her pet cause was the plight of the atlantic bluefin tuna. She frequently lamented that only the cute animals get any real support.
If you're going to eat salmon anyway (and lots of people do), it's much less destructive to eat it factory farmed. This actually goes for every single fish.
There's a kind of a compromise going on here. Wild Salmon stocks are limited and were it not for farming demand would outstrip what's available. Apparently the tradeoff here is "dead zones" in the ocean unfortunately.
Of course, as I say, the farmed salmon is not the same fish as the wild one. The flesh is dyed pink. The flavour doesn't benefit from the wild salmon's varied diet, and the texture isn't developed by all that swimming upstream.
There is a very wide variance in the quality of farmed salmon too, to the point where you really can't be sure what you're eating unless you actually know the farm it's coming from.
I've heard it said that farmed salmon carries little of the health benefits of wild salmon. Personally I'd prefer to just pay a lot to eat salmon very rarely than to eat farmed salmon frequently. But everywhere you go there is otherwise indiscriminate demand.
Even animals react to it. A live and let live attitude (if not one of protectiveness) towards harmless/cute living things is perfectly healthy it seems.
Cruelty was par for the course when it came to nature documentaries unfortunately. Most nature documentaries of the past were staged. One of the most infamous one was where they would trap and drug jaguars and them dump them on the riverbank and wait for caimans to kill it.
Notice how the jaguar can't move from that spot even with a bunch of large caiman right in front of it? It's almost like one of the jaguar's paws were pinned down to keep it in one spot. Wonder why? Could it be cameras were heavy and clunky contraptions back then that you could realistically focus on one area at a time? Can't capture jaguar footage if the jaguar is allowed to move out of frame. Or it was drugged so much that it had no idea what was going on.
The funny thing is David Attenborough docos are horrifically anti science. Basically just nature porn.
But the previous yard stick was doco's that Disney was making, way, way worse, so the BBC got more credit, it changed the game.
But the whole population doesn't need to understand nature and most people agree we need to preserve nature where ever possible so there's still value in the Planet series etc, but it scary how many biologists/scientists believe it.
Just a few days ago on hn I discovered the stanford prison expweiment was largely faked, and now this. I guess this is good reason to be suspicious of pop science factoids that often get thrown around in discussions.
And myth explanations spawn more myths. I had read (forgot the source) that it was a myth and that the lemmings were really jumping off cliffs to swim to an island people weren't generally aware of.
Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.
This is triply interesting for me because I had never heard of this myth and, reading the comments, I appear the be the only one out of the loop on the myth itself or the game. I wonder how many other pop-sci myths I'm unaware of.
Only ever heard someone be called a "lemon" which was I presumed because they were so winsome they made you purse up your mouth like you'd just tasted lemon.
Congratulations on being one of today’s lucky ten thousand then!
I found this podcast here in the comments for more such things, called “99% Invisible” apparently elephants walk surprisingly silently instead of the thunderous stomping in the cinema.
I am a Disney fan but never knew about this. Disappointed. I would think modern Disney probably is much better than that nowadays. I think nothing like this would happen today thanks to CGI.
If you are OK with eating meat, you should be OK with killing animals for a movie, in my opinion. When you eat a steak, you could eat potatoes or something instead, but you choose to eat an animal because you like how it tastes. I don't see that as any different from killing animals for a movie, in both cases you are unnecessarily killing an animal for your enjoyment.
Well when you eat a animal, you are doing it because eating is necessary, and some people are picky eaters conditioned to like meat since childhood.
But I feel like killing them for a movie is a waste, unless they are eaten later maybe but still not too much better. Like if you kill a animal, you should try to use every single part of it as possible. Same thing the Native Americans believe.
Lemmings are fearless creatures that will scream to any animal, including humans, that cross their path.
I have seen a Lemmings confronting a crow. The crow sends the lemmings flying on three different occasions until it took the lemming dead body and left flying. The lemmings never tried to run or hide, it just was screaming at the crow until its very last moments.
So I can see that "mass suicide" is a myth. But it has some true on it looking at the lemmings' behaviour.
110 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadI found this entire episode fascinating, especially the part about Elephant footsteps being nearly silent in the real world.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding-ph...
Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth:
> Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century.
By "our broken epistemology" I mean "our broken methodologies of evaluating the truth of our beliefs and the certainty of our knowledge". The brokenness of our practical epistemology is why these common misconceptions not only exist, but continue to dominate.
I could have been more precise and said "our broken epistemological systems",
Yet another black mark against Disney's attempts to make "nature more interesting" only to be just making up just so stories.
From White Wilderness, as the movie shows drowning Lemmings, put there by Disney employees, the narrator goes:
"And so is acted out, the legend of mass suicide and destruction of a species."
https://youtu.be/xMZlr5Gf9yY?t=2m50s
Probably because it's inaccurate/exaggerated in a couple ways.
1. Genocide refers to humans, not animals, and requires the act to be targeted at a group of people that share some sort of traits (typically race, or cultural identity).
2. Disney imported "no more than a few dozen lemmings," which doesn't really meet the numbers the word typically is used for.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness/
Disney killed lemmings, and unless they attempted to wipe out all lemmings that share a particular cultural identity, it's probably pretty insensitive to use it in this context.
One might also consider that animals are people, too.
However, I don't think you can make the case that Disney set out to wipe lemmings from the earthwe.
"the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation."
While xenocide is described as:
xenocide (plural xenocides)
The killing of a stranger or foreigner. (science fiction) The genocide of an entire alien species. (US, colloquial) The intentional killing of an entire foreign (plant or animal) species.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenocide
Either is fine really, just seems like a semantic curiosity.
Genocide or xenocide would carry the meaning that the very animal (or even a single species) was brought to the brink of extinction, thereby threatening the genome of the animal. Hence “gene”-o-cide.
Disney didn’t even encourage abuse or mischief among viewers. So, the comment doesn’t really make sense. No one tried to kill a real live lemming, or coax them off a cliff. The mysterious allegedly suicidal behavior wasn’t a call to action, to change lemmings or their behavioral patterns.
Lemming suicide is also mentioned on page 66 of the first edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey: https://archive.org/stream/confessionsofeng00dequ_1#page/66/...
This was published in 1832 and revised in 1856.
"mass dispersal" occurs when the population grows too much and the food runs out, sometimes it can be very directional, and sometimes they will pile up on the shore until they gets too packed and they try to swim across frigid waters.
the Disney mass suicide documentary says this can be observed every 7 - 10 years, and then they over dramatized how it looks
edit: removed blue planet reference, peace!
edit2: alright folks, what is inaccurate or disagreeable about what I wrote? I'm downvoted so far that I can't even post a rebuttal anymore and have zero feedback about how I read the Alaska Government's article incorrectly
However, they don't kill the captive animals, which is the key difference.
Businessinsider.com has a page that shows four that Disney apologized about or said were untrue. [1]
In the same way, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and others were believed to be great reporters, even though they created their own sensationalized fake news to get ratings.
One of the items from Rather was called "Fake but Accurate" by Rather. "The New York Times' headline report on this interview, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate," created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS's broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS's news division." [2]
One of Williams stories about being in a flaming plane that was shot down was debunked by the soldiers who were in the plane with him, the plane that was unhit and unlit. Williams later apologized, saying he didn't "know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another." [3]
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-channels-fake-docum...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams-apol...
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams...
The most important attribute for animal rights causes it seems. If Facebook campaigns are any measure...
Fish, though, yeah, they're not getting any cuteness bonus. Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture.
I have recently, and irrationally, stopped eating octopus because they're so smart. Maybe some viral videos of tuna doing amazing things would help...
Ah come on![0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJgCDBx2bU
EDIT: P.S.
> Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture.
I try not to eat Salmon; it's pretty much always farmed, often in ugly conditions which is a travesty for such a noble creature.
Of course, as I say, the farmed salmon is not the same fish as the wild one. The flesh is dyed pink. The flavour doesn't benefit from the wild salmon's varied diet, and the texture isn't developed by all that swimming upstream.
There is a very wide variance in the quality of farmed salmon too, to the point where you really can't be sure what you're eating unless you actually know the farm it's coming from.
I've heard it said that farmed salmon carries little of the health benefits of wild salmon. Personally I'd prefer to just pay a lot to eat salmon very rarely than to eat farmed salmon frequently. But everywhere you go there is otherwise indiscriminate demand.
Even animals react to it. A live and let live attitude (if not one of protectiveness) towards harmless/cute living things is perfectly healthy it seems.
How many species have gone extinct for purely natural reasons again?
Humans are a non-linear term in the equation, but the idea of an untouched and immutable nature is incorrect.
"Imma make lots of money from this"
https://youtu.be/huGJmQU4Piw?t=159
Notice how the jaguar can't move from that spot even with a bunch of large caiman right in front of it? It's almost like one of the jaguar's paws were pinned down to keep it in one spot. Wonder why? Could it be cameras were heavy and clunky contraptions back then that you could realistically focus on one area at a time? Can't capture jaguar footage if the jaguar is allowed to move out of frame. Or it was drugged so much that it had no idea what was going on.
But the previous yard stick was doco's that Disney was making, way, way worse, so the BBC got more credit, it changed the game.
But the whole population doesn't need to understand nature and most people agree we need to preserve nature where ever possible so there's still value in the Planet series etc, but it scary how many biologists/scientists believe it.
Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.
I found this podcast here in the comments for more such things, called “99% Invisible” apparently elephants walk surprisingly silently instead of the thunderous stomping in the cinema.
so... never played the Lemmings video game ?
I am a Disney fan but never knew about this. Disappointed. I would think modern Disney probably is much better than that nowadays. I think nothing like this would happen today thanks to CGI.
But I feel like killing them for a movie is a waste, unless they are eaten later maybe but still not too much better. Like if you kill a animal, you should try to use every single part of it as possible. Same thing the Native Americans believe.
Lemmings are fearless creatures that will scream to any animal, including humans, that cross their path.
I have seen a Lemmings confronting a crow. The crow sends the lemmings flying on three different occasions until it took the lemming dead body and left flying. The lemmings never tried to run or hide, it just was screaming at the crow until its very last moments.
So I can see that "mass suicide" is a myth. But it has some true on it looking at the lemmings' behaviour.