Lemmings Massive Suicide

Lemmings suicide is a urban legend started by a Walt Disney film called White Wilderness.

People widely believed that lemmings committed suicide, and on a massive scale. The filming took place in Alberta, Canada. But when the film crew got there, they found no lemmings and no examples of suicide. The lemming's natural habitat is northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia. Not to be dissuaded, the crew went down the unfortunate path of story fabrication.

They paid Inuit children 25 cents for every lemming they could catch.
They then placed the lemmings on a large turntable, like a 'merry-go-round' hidden with snow, and got the lemmings running. With some imaginative camera angles and editing, they made a few dozen lemmings look like thousands migrating and rushing to a scene even more startling.

After the migration sequence, the lemmings were collected and taken to a cliff top overlooking a river. The documentary crew crouched down hidden from the cameras, and pushed the lemmings over the edge of the cliff to their death in the rushing water below. The myth of lemming suicide turned from fable to fact ....