MYTH vs REALITY
Setting the record straight
LEMMING SUICIDE
The idea that lemmings commit suicide by jumping off cliffs, or drowning themselves in the sea or lakes, is completely false. The myth originated from the award-winning 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, in which the producers sensationalised the animals’ natural behaviour and manufactured imagery.
Lemming populations fluctuate widely, reaching a high every few years. When this happens the lemmings disperse to find new food supplies and, in doing so, they occasionally encounter cliffs or, more often, rivers and lakes that they swim across – a few individuals drowning in the process.
The lemmings that Disney paid local Inuit children to collect for him were then thrown off a cliff in front of the cameras, to simulate the rodents’ suicide.
PLOVER TOOTHPICKS
The Egyptian plover has long been supposed to have a symbiotic relationship with crocodiles. The idea that the ‘crocodile bird’ forages inside the mouths of Nile crocodiles dates back to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who in the fifth-century BCE reported how “birds and other animals keep their distance from the crocodiles, except for the trochilus, who pops into the crocodile’s mouth and eats up the leeches – so the crocodile does the bird no harm”.
The trochilus is assumed to be the Egyptian plover, but no one other than the ornithologist Richard Meinertzhagen – famous for his own fake news – claims to have witnessed the behaviour. Indeed, the notion that the plover acts as the croc’s toothpick is untenable, since crocodiles' dentition is such that it has no need of one.
This myth, whose origins lay in the fact that Egyptian plovers sometimes forage close to crocodiles, has been given new life by faked photographs, which appear to show a plover in the open jaws of a crocodile.
NO ONE ELSE WILL DO
The idea that certain birds ‘pair for life’ is an old and enduring one that appeals to our own sentiments. In fact, the expression ‘pairing for life’ has been interpreted in two ways, one correct, the other wrong.
The term simply means that partners remain together and breed together over several successive seasons. The mute swan is a prime example, but many other long-lived birds, such as guillemots and albatrosses, also have longterm pair bonds.
However, ‘pairing for life’ has been taken to mean that if one partner dies, the other refrains from seeking another mate and remains celibate for the rest of its life. This is a myth. Natural selection favours individuals that leave descendants, so it seems unlikely to favour celibacy. Most individuals that lose a partner look for and find a new one sooner or later.