If you kids dont behave,I'll drive right off the next cliff...

[Danny]

I wanted to write something that would correlate lemmings to humans in the things we do,decisions we make.Some things to me just seem beyond explanation.Before I made such an analogy, I wanted to make sure that what I was comparing was somewhat scientifically legitimate. Hearing by word of mouth and funny Gary Larson cartoons was the only basis of info I had on lemmings....So I did what any normal 21st centurycouch potato person would do...I googled it :P...I found this:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1081903.htm

"One myth deeply entrenched in our language is that of the "Lemming Suicide Plunge" - where lemmings, apparently overcome by deep-rooted impulses, deliberately run over a cliff in their millions, to be dashed to their deaths on the rocks below, or to drown in the raging ocean. Indeed, this myth is now a metaphor for the behaviour of crowds of people who foolishly follow each other, lemming-like, regardless of the consequences. This particular myth began with a Disney movie.

Lemmings belong to the rodents. Rodents have been around for about 57 million years. Today, about half of all the individuals mammals on Earth are rodents. There are four genera of lemmings - Collared Lemmings, "True" Lemmings, Wood or Red-Backed Lemmings and Bog Lemmings. They are found in the cooler northern parts of Eurasia and North America. The True Lemming is about 10 cm long, with short legs and tail.

Many of the rodents have strange population explosions. One such event in the Central Valley of California in 1926-27 had mouse populations reaching around 200,000 per hectare (about 20 mice per square metre). In France between 1790 and 1935, there were at least 20 mouse plagues. But lemmings have the most regular fluctuations - these population explosions happen every three or four years. The numbers rocket up, and then drop almost to extinction. Even after three-quarters of a century of intensive research, we don't fully understand why their populations fluctuate so much. Various factors (change in food availability, climate, density of predators, stress of overcrowding, infectious diseases, snow conditions, sunspots, etc) have all been put forward, but none completely explain what is going on.

Back in the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg, tried to explain these variations in populations by saying that lemmings fell out of the sky in stormy weather, and then suffered mass extinctions with the sprouting of the grasses of spring. Back in the 19th century, the Naturalist Edward Nelson wrote that "the Norton Sound Eskimo have an odd superstition that the White Lemming lives in the land beyond the stars and that it sometimes comes down to the earth, descending in a spiral course during snow-storms." But none of the Intuit stories mention the "suicide leaps off cliffs".

When these population explosions happen, the lemming migrate away from the denser centres. The migrations begin slowly and erratically, with an evolution from small numbers moving at night, to larger groups in the daytime. The most dramatic movements happen with the True Lemmings (also called the Norway Lemming). Even so, they do not form a continuous mass, but instead travel in groups with gaps of 10 minutes or more between them. They tend to follow roads and paths. Lemmings avoid water, and will usually scout around for a land crossing. But if they have to, they will swim. Their swimming ability is such that they can cross a 200 metre body of water on a calm night, but most will drown in a windy night.

So lemmings do have their regular wild fluctuations in population - and when the numbers are high, the lemmings do migrate."

Comment:.....OK..fair enough so it's a myth.It's one side anyway ..I'm not a zoologist or have anything to debate here.
But then the author goes on to say ever so sublty...:

The myth of mass lemming suicide began when the Walt Disney movie, Wild Wilderness was released in 1958. It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, far from the sea and not a native home to lemmings. So the filmmakers imported lemmings, by buying them from Inuit children. The migration sequence was filmed by placing the lemmings on a spinning turntable that was covered with snow, and then shooting it from many different angles. The cliff-death-plunge sequence was done by herding the lemmings over a small cliff into a river. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers did this - wild animals are notoriously uncooperative, and a migration-of-doom followed by a cliff-of-death sequence is far more dramatic to show than the lemmings' self-implemented population-density management plan."

Comment: Wow so in order to make life look more "real" make some chaos amongst the herd get all the flailing and horror on film because the real story is much too boring.

"So lemmings do not commit mass suicide. Indeed, animals live to thrive and survive. Consider a company like Disney, where one rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, was Royalty. It's rather odd to think that Disney could be so unkind to another rodent, the lemming... "

lol I know it's ever so slight...but are you hearing something there?
I won;t even touch the "hollywood/Jewish" implications that could be dug up here.That would be just stooping to a psychopathic level.Truly understanding the mindset is extremely prevalent IMHO.

 

[FranzJoseph]

...The myth of mass lemming suicide began when the Walt Disney movie, Wild Wilderness was released in 1958. It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, far from the sea and not a native home to lemmings. So the filmmakers imported lemmings, by buying them from Inuit children. The migration sequence was filmed by placing the lemmings on a spinning turntable that was covered with snow, and then shooting it from many different angles. The cliff-death-plunge sequence was done by herding the lemmings over a small cliff into a river. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers did this - wild animals are notoriously uncooperative, and a migration-of-doom followed by a cliff-of-death sequence is far more dramatic to show than the lemmings' self-implemented population-density management plan."

I never bought the "wholesome Disney" business but this is disgusting even so. That's lots worse than the old tripwires-for-horses in the old cowboy movies. This is fraud and animal cruelty. Professional wildlife people should have raised holy hell over this and called for a boycott of Disney till they made some sort of compensation. I just don't know how dead lemmings are compensated, dammit.

I won;t even touch the "hollywood/Jewish" implications that could be dug up here.

They sort of jump out anyway.

 

[Danny]

...and this is precisely how the pathocratic mind works...it can't understand normal activity amongst a certain person group of people so they simply concoct a fantasy about it and scream "See?? Look at these freaks! They are crazy."."Path of least resistance" cut & dry. That is how all these ugly religious rumors are started.

 

[Pierre]

We can find a similar story in Germany a few centuries ago :

Overview

In 1284, the town of Hamelin was suffering from a dreaded rat infestation. One day, a man claiming to be a rat-catcher approached the villagers with a solution. They promised him a schilling for the head of each rat. The man accepted and thus took a pipe and lured the rats with a song into the Weser river , where all 999,999 drowned. Despite his success, the people reneged on their promise and refused to pay the rat-catcher, reasoning that he had failed to produce the heads. He left the town, but returned several weeks later. While the inhabitants were in the church, he played his pipe again , this time attracting the children of Hamelin. One hundred and thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave and sealed inside . Depending on the version, at most two children remained behind. Other versions claim that the Piper returned the children after the villagers paid several times the original amount of gold.

History

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a glass window placed in the church of Hamelin c. 1300. It was described in several accounts between the 14th century and the 17th century but it seems to have been destroyed . Based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by Hans Dobbertin. It features the colorful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white.

This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the city. But although there has been a lot of research, no clear explanation can be given of what historical event is behind the reports, see an external link with a list of theories. However, the rats were first added to the story in the late 16th century; they are absent from all previous accounts. Some traumatic event must have given rise to the legend; Hamelin town records are dated from this time.

Theories that have gained some support can be grouped into the following four categories:

* The children fell victim to an accident, either drowning in the river Weser or being buried in a landslide.
* The children contracted some disease during an epidemic and were led out of town to die in order to protect the rest of the city's population from contracting it. An early form of Black Death has been suggested. Others attribute the dancing of the children to be an early reference to Huntington's disease, an inherited disorder. Another possibility would be the outbreaks of chorea, or communal dancing mania, which are recorded in a number of European towns during the period of general distress which followed the Black Death.

The 'Verstegan/Browning' date, 1376, would be consistent with this. These theories perceive the Piper as a symbolic figure of Death. Death is often portrayed dressed in motley, or "pied." Analogous themes which are associated with this theory include the Dance of Death, Totentanz or Danse Macabre, a common medieval type. Various ecstatic outbreaks were associated with the Plague, such as the Flagellants, who wandered from place to place while scourging themselves in penance for sins that presumably brought the plague upon Europe. The rat is the preferred host for the plague vector, the rat flea. When the rats die first, the fleas seek a secondary host. Children would be more vulnerable to the disease.

The children left the city to be part of a pilgrimage, a military campaign, or even a new Children's crusade but never returned to their parents. These theories see the unnamed Piper as their leader or a recruiting agent.
The children willingly abandoned their parents and Hamelin in order to become the founders of their own villages during the colonization of Eastern Europe. Several European villages and cities founded around this time have been suggested as the result of their efforts as settlers. This claim is supported by corresponding placenames in both the region around Hamelin and the eastern colonies where names such as Querhameln ("mill village Hamelin") exist. Again the Piper is seen as their leader.

The tradition that the children emigrated in 1284 is so old and well-reported that explanations associated with the Black Death seem unlikely. Modern scholars regard the emigration theory to be the most probable [citation needed], i.e. that the Pied Piper of Hamelin was a recruiter for the colonization of Eastern Europe which took part in the 13th century and that he led away a big part of the young generation of Hamelin to a region in Eastern Germany.

Decan Lude of Hamelin was reported ca. 1384 to have in his possession a chorus book containing a Latin verse giving an eyewitness account of the event. The verse was reportedly written by his grandmother. This chorus book is believed to have been lost since the late 17th century.

A German account of the event seems to have survived in a 1602/1603 inscription found in Hamelin:

It has been roughly translated into English as:

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul
was the 26th of June
By a piper, dressed in all kinds of colors,
130 children born in Hamelin were seduced
and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.

Koppen (Old German meaning "hills") seems to be a reference to one of several hills surrounding the city. Which of them was intended by the verse's author remains uncertain.

The oldest remaining written source is from ca. 1440.

Reportedly, there is a long-established law forbidding singing and music in one particular street of Hamelin, out of respect for the victims: the Bungelosenstrasse adjacent to the Pied Piper's House.

In 1556 "De miraculis sui temporis" (Latin: Concerning the Wonders of his Times) by Jobus Fincelius mentions the legend. The author identifies the Piper with the Devil.

The earliest English account is that of Richard Rowland Verstegan (1548-c. 1636), an antiquary and religious controversialist of partly Dutch descent, in his 'Restitution of Decayed Intelligence' (Antwerp, 1605); unfortunately he does not give his source. He includes the reference to the rats and the idea that the lost children turned up in Transylvania. The phrase 'Pied Piper' seems to have been coined by Verstegan. Curiously enough his date is entirely different from that given above: July 22, 1376. Verstegan's account was copied in Nathaniel Wanley's 'Wonders of the Visible World' (1687), which was the immediate source of Robert Browning's well-known poem (below).

In 1803, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem based on the legend. He incorporated references to the story in his version of Faust. The first part of the Drama was first published in 1808 and the second in 1832.

Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, siblings known as the Brothers Grimm, drawing from eleven sources included the tale in their collection "Deutsche Sagen" (German Legends), first published in 1816. According to their account two children were left behind as one was blind and the other lame, so neither could follow the others. The rest became the founders of Siebenbergen (Transylvania).

Based probably on the Grimm Brother's version of the tale, Robert Browning wrote a poem of that name which was published in 1849. (It places the events on July 22, 1376.) Browning's verse retelling is notable for its humor, wordplay, and jingling rhymes.

"When, lo, as they reached the mountain's side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast."

This place is up the Coppenbrugge mountain, and is infamously known as an ancient site of pagan worship.

The Pied Piper story is heavily referenced by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva in her poem The Ratcatcher, first published in 1925.

The Pied Piper is the title of a well-known novel (later filmed) by Nevil Shute.

In 2005, children's author Jane Yolen wrote a young adult novel about the tale: Pay the Piper, a rock and roll fairy tale.

Also in 2005, Adam McCune and Keith McCune, a father-son writing team, published The Rats of Hamelin, in which an eighteen-year-old Pied Piper faces a hidden enemy with powers like his own.

"Pay the piper"

The tale has inspired a common English phrase, "pay the piper", which means to face the inevitable consequences of one's actions . The phrase sometimes refers to a financial transaction but often does not. A phrase with similar meaning and slightly more negative connotation is "face the music".

The tale in music

In 1966, the song "The Pied Piper" became a smash hit and signature song of British musician Crispian St. Peters. The song reached #6 in the U.S. (Billboard Hot 100), and the top 10 in the UK.
The 1999 release by Demons And Wizards features a song entitled "The Whistler", which portrays the Pied Piper as a lurer for a clan of rats, who will feast upon the children of the townspeople who did not repay their debt.
The ABBA track "The Piper" is also inspired by the tale. Includes the lyric: "We're all following a strange melody, we're all following a tune, we're following the piper and we dance beneath the moon."
In the title track of Radiohead's album Kid A (2000), the song references the tale in the ending lyrics, "The rats and children follow me out of town, rats and children follow me out of your homes. Poor kids."
The 1992 Megadeth song "Symphony of Destruction" from their Countdown To Extinction album references the Pied Piper.
The Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven" references the Pied Piper.
Jethro Tull included the song "Pied Piper" on their album Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! (1976).
In Extremo have recently put Goethe's verse to music in their song, "Der Rattenfenger" on their album, Sonder ohne Zogel.
Chulo Hamlin, an Argentine band, dedicated its name partly to this classic pipe player, as well as many songs.
R. Kelly, an R&B singer, is known among his fans as the "Pied Piper of R&B".
Eminem includes the lyrics, "Best believe somebody's payin' the pied piper," in the song "Lose Yourself" from the 8 Mile Soundtrack. (2002)
NOFX refer to paying the piper in the song Bottles to the Ground.
A song by Genesis, "Supper's Ready," references the Pied Piper in its sixth section with the line, "the pied piper takes the children underground."
In 2006, Houston band Erase the Virus released the song "Pied Piper".
Edguy's "The Piper Never Dies," on the 2003 album Hellfire Club, refers to the eponymous piper as the "Pied Piper" towards the end.

The tale in film
The story has been depicted many times on film: 1903, 1911, 1913, 1918, 1924, 1926, 1933, 1957, 1972, 1982 and 1985.
The 1957 film "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" was a musical version, using the music of Edvard Grieg, and starring Van Johnson in the title role
The 1972 version "The Pied Piper" contained music by Donovan, who also played the title role.
The 1985 Krysar was a stop-motion film animated by the Trnka Studio in Czechoslovakia and directed by Jiri Barta that used a modified darker version of the story. It was told entirely without any discernable words.
Nevil Shute's novel Pied Piper was set in Nazi-occupied France and was only very loosely connected with the original story. It was filmed as The Pied Piper in 1942 and 1990.
Atom Egoyan's 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter (based on the novel by Russell Banks) makes extensive metaphorical use of the Pied Piper legend. Browning's poem forms the narration for the film, delivered by a young girl who was crippled in a school bus accident that killed all of the other children in her small Canadian town. The script adds several lines that are not in Browning's poem.

The tale in contemporary literature

The story provides the basis for the central plot and several characters in the 1998 debut novel King Rat by China Miaville.
In the play The Pillowman, the main character had written a story explaining the origin of the lame child who could not follow the Piper. He claimed that it was the Piper himself who chopped off the child's toes, because the child had showed him kindness, and the Piper did not want to punish the child.
Breath by Donna Jo Napoli tells the tale from the point of view of the lame child left behind when the Piper takes the children into the mountain.
Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a humorous take on the Pied Piper, one which manages to lampoon the fairy tale conventions of the original tale while providing thoughtful commentary on the motives that drive people to act as they do in the real world.
After Hamelin by Bill Richardson is a unique story that picks up the story where Browning's poem left off. It is written in the voice of the deaf child in the poem, who Richardson names Penelope.
Just a Couple of Days, by Tony Vigorito, is a satirical story of biological warfare with a so-called "Pied Piper Virus." The book presents an interesting history of the Pied Piper legend, linking it to the medieval "Dancing Manias" (see also: St. John's Dance).
Michael Moorcock produces his own theory of the Hamelin legend in his book, The Dreamthief's Daughter, where the cavern that the children escape into is actually a secret entrance to the Mittelmarch.
The Ratastrophe Catastrophe by David Lee Stone is a parody based on the Pied Piper about a boy called Diek who takes away the children of a town because a voice in his head told him to.

Pied-piping in linguistics

In linguistics pied-piping is the common, informal name for the ability of question words and relative pronouns to drag other words along with them when brought to the front, as part of the phenomenon called Wh-movement. For example, in "For whom are the pictures?", the word "for" is pied-piped by "whom" away from its declarative position ("The pictures are for me"), and in "The mayor, pictures of whom adorn his office walls" both word "pictures of" are pied-piped to in front of the relative pronoun, which normally starts the relative clause.