With 'White Wilderness' the master of unusual entertainment has struck pure gold, for this is probably the best of his many true-to-life films". Geoffrey Warren of the Los Angeles Times stated: "Walt Disney has turned again to Nature for adventure and profit. Disney has assembled a fine, often fascinating color documentary on animal life in the North American Arctic". The sight of a few lemmings mistaking a lake or ocean for a stream and drowning after swimming out too far, or being pushed over a cliff during the frenzied rush of migration, has become the basis of a widespread belief that lemmings commit suicide en masse when their numbers grow too large.Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote "Mr. Many nature shows and films of this era - including Disney's "True-Life Adventure" movies and TV's Wild Kingdom - staged events to capture exciting footage for their audiences. Nature documentaries are notoriously difficult to film, as wild animals are not terribly cooperative. Simon, the principal photographer for the lemmings sequence. It is not known whether Disney approved or knew about the activities of James R. Nine different photographers spent three years shooting and assembling footage for the various segments that comprise White Wilderness. The entire sequence was faked using a handful of lemmings deceptively photographed to create the illusion of a large herd of migrating White Wilderness does not depict an actual lemming migration - at no time are more than a few dozen lemmings ever shown on the screen at once. The Arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and filmed from various angles to produce a "migration" sequence afterwards, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water. Lemmings were imported for use in the film, purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. In fact, when the competition for food, space, or mates becomes too intense, lemmings are much more likely to kill each other than to kill themselves.ĭisney's White Wilderness was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings and has no outlet to the sea. These deaths are not deliberate "suicide" attempts, however, but accidental deaths resulting from the lemmings' venturing into unfamiliar territories and being crowded and pushed over dangerous ledges. When such a migration occurs, some lemmings die by falling over cliffs or drowning in lakes or rivers. Cyclical explosions in population do occasionally induce lemmings to attempt to migrate to areas of lesser population density. Contrary to popular belief, lemmings do not periodically hurl Lemmingthemselves off of cliffs and into the sea. Why are people so quick and eager to believe something just because it involves cruelty to animals?Ĭlaim: During the filming of the 1958 Disney nature documentary White Wilderness, the film crew induced lemmings into jumping off a cliff and into the sea in order to document their supposedly suicidal behavior. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore.” (wikipedia) They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death. “On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. Or… Do you mean that Disney hoaxed one particular staged event in which lemmings jumped off a cliff in order to prove the point that they do this naturally? Hasn’t the idea that lemmings leap off of cliffs during migration been around for centuries and centuries?Īre you saying that this idea was completely fabricated by Disney when that film was made? And that NO lemmings at all have ever jumped off a cliff?
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