The Cliff That Was Built - An RC Inspired by IIM Indore

In 1958 Disney's nature film White Wilderness showed a scene that audiences never forgot. A narrator explained that lemmings, seized by a migratory frenzy, rush toward the Arctic Ocean and hurl themselves from a cliff into the waves. The film won an Academy Award for documentary feature and became a fixture of school screenings. Within a generation the word lemming had entered everyday speech as a verdict on anyone who follows a crowd to ruin.

The footage was staged. Investigations years later reported that the crew had filmed in Alberta, far from any sea, using animals bought from children in Manitoba. The lemmings were set on a snow covered turntable to imitate a swarm, and the fatal plunge was the work of film makers who pushed the animals over an edge and into a river. The migration was a stage set and the suicide was a stunt.

Nature offers a quieter account. Lemming numbers in northern regions rise and crash in cycles of a few years, and when a population peaks, young animals scatter in search of food and space. Some drown while crossing rivers and lakes and others fall to predators. The scattering is dangerous, but it is a gamble on survival and not a wish for death. What looks from outside like self destruction is a search for somewhere to live.

The story endured because it was useful. People have long wanted an animal that embodies conformity, a creature that follows the group over the edge without thinking, and the lemming obliged. The hunger for such a symbol is older than the film. Applying the label to others also carries a pleasant flattery, since nobody who uses it imagines being one of the herd.

The migration was a stage set and the suicide was a stunt.

A sceptic will point out that the legend predates the film. Travellers and naturalists had told tales of mass lemming migrations for centuries, and Disney merely borrowed a rumour already in circulation. The objection is fair as far as it goes. But the older tales were words, and words invite doubt in a way that pictures do not. A camera turns a legend into a record, and a record is believed because it appears to have no author.

The deeper puzzle concerns the borrowing. A fabricated animal became the standard image of human conformity, and millions adopted it without checking, which is conformity of exactly the kind it was supposed to mock. Whether the metaphor survives because it describes us or because it lets us feel exempt is unclear. If a false story about herd behaviour spread by herd behaviour, then the lemmings may have taught the lesson after all, though not the one the narrator meant.