Lemming
| Lemming | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Norway lemming (Lemmus lemmus) | |
Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Rodentia |
| Family: | Cricetidae |
| Subfamily: | Arvicolinae |
| Groups included | |
| |
| Cladistically included but traditionally excluded taxa | |
| |
Lemmings are small rodents. They live in or near the Arctic, in tundra biomes.
Life
[change | change source]Lemmings and voles are the rats and mice of the Arctic. Lemmings have very short tails. They live underground in summer. Because the top soil freezes in the winter, they cannot burrow underground then, so they live under the snow during the colder months. They eat plants and roots. If they find plenty of food, they will have extra large families that year.
In a year with plenty of food, millions of lemmings will be roaming the tundra. The owls and foxes have more food than they can eat. They will have extra babies in they years when there are so many lemmings. However, the tundra does not have enough food for millions of lemmings. They rush across the tundra looking for food, and are eaten by predators or starve to death.
Many lemmings leave to find a new home, when they run out of food and space. Soon, millions of lemmings decide to follow the crowd. They go across the Arctic as a huge mass. Foxes and owls kill many of them. Some drown when trying to swim across rivers. It is often said that they fall off cliffs or even commit mass suicide, but that is an urban legend created by a Disney documentary (White Wilderness, 1958) in which someone actually pushed the lemmings over the edge.
The lemmings that are left have enough food and space to survive. Then they start to breed and multiply again.[1]
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Cole, Joanna (2000). The Magic School Bus, Polar Bear Patrol. U.S.A. ISBN 0-439-31433-X.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Other websites
[change | change source]- "The Lemming Cycle" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2005-12-23(92.6 KiB).
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link) Article by Nils Christian Stenseth on the population cycles of lemmings and other northern rodents. - "Collared Lemming" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-03. Retrieved 2007-05-26(177 KiB).
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link) Article about Collared Lemming, see also the main page on Alaskan mammals Archived 2007-12-18 at the Wayback Machine. - Rebuttal of lemming suicide:
