We all know that lemmings migrate every so often and end up jumping into the oceans to drown in large groups, right? Turns out that’s a myth. An urban legend. Snopes.com tells us that while Disney was filming White Wilderness back in 1958, “the film crew induced lemmings into jumping off a cliff and into the sea in order to document their supposedly suicidal behavior.” Click the link to find out more about the filming of these lemmings. Turns out it wasn’t even a migration. They only had a small amount of lemmings that they filmed “deceptively” in order to make it appear like huge herds.

The trivia section for this film in the Internet Movie Database says: “This picture was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings. They were imported from Manitoba for use in the film, and were purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. The Arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and filmed from various angles to produce a “migration” sequence; afterwords, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water. The entire sequence was faked using a handful of lemmings deceptively photographed to create the illusion of a large herd of migrating creatures.”

Now you know.