Pilots: Lemmings Never Jumped Off a Cliff

Lemmings never jumped off a cliff.

The famous shot comes from a Disney nature film, White Wilderness, made in 1958. It was shot in Alberta, where lemmings don't live, so the crew bought a few dozen from Inuit children, ran them on a snowy turntable for the great migration, and for the big finish pushed them off a bluff into the Bow River and called it the sea. It won the Oscar for best documentary, and in 1982 a Canadian TV show called Cruel Camera found out how it was made. Real lemmings do boom and crash every three or four years, and they swim across rivers to find room. Not jumpers. Swimmers.

Watch it here, then share this page so the title, artwork, and 21x20 Media credit travel with the film.