Little Lemmings

Lemmings are very small creatures measuring usually between three and six inches long.  However, the smallest lemming measures only eight centimeters!  

The wood lemming is the tiniest of them all, measuring anywhere between eight and twelve centimeters long.  They typically weigh less than one ounce as well.

8 Common Animal Misconceptions

We do our best here on the Jungle Store Blog to bring you daily interesting animal facts, but we have no problem deferring to someone else from time to time! Youtube user GCPGrey makes all sorts of interesting videos that bust common misconceptions about a variety of topics, and his most recent is about animals! From bats to frogs, here are 8 common misconceptions about animals…

Of course, our regular readers already know the origin of the myth behind lemmings, which we covered in this post. And do people really think the daddy long legs is a spider?

Snowy Owls in Missouri?

The large and powerful snowy owl is best known in its Arctic tundra summer home of northern Alaska, Canada, and Eurasia. Like all snowy owls, North American birds are nomadic and usually migrate as far south as southern Canada each winter in search of food. However, during the annual Christmas Bird Count this year participants have counted over a dozen snowy owls in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa; an incredibly high number so far south.

Snowy Owl at Smithville Lake 12/2011. Courtesy Missouri Dept. of Conservation

Being as we at the Jungle Store are located in the Kansas City area, this is exciting news for local birdwatchers. Seeing a single snowy owl wintering this far south is extremely rare, and this year alone three have already been spotted in the Smithville Lake area just north of Kansas City.

As carnivores, snowy owls tend to move whenever food becomes scarce. Their primary food source in the Arctic is the lemming, an animal that is notorious for experiencing huge population booms and declines every four years. Missouri conservationists believe that this southward migration has to do with a lemming population crash in the north, as snowy owls haven’t been seen in this area in several years.

Although they’re not native residents, it is a treat to catch a glimpse of these massive owls in our own backyards for a short while.

Lemmings Deserve some Respect

Lemmings have a long-standing reputation as unintelligent animals. Video games and urban legends are based around these arctic rodents mindlessly jumping off cliffs and drowning for no apparent reason during migration.

These myths primarily stem from a 1958 nature documentary called White Wilderness. In the film, a migrating mass of lemmings are shown leaping to their deaths into the Arctic Ocean. In reality, these lemmings were actually pushed over a cliff by a rotating platform off-camera to create drama. Most experts agree that the species of lemming shown in this scene doesn’t even migrate at all.

The only lemmings that regularly migrate are Scandinavian species, and they only do so when absolutely necessary. The reason for these migrations has to do available food supplies for the population, which can run low quickly. The Norway lemming reaches sexual maturity at one month old and can produce a litter of six to eight young every three weeks year round if weather is good. This can lead to a larger lemming population than the area can support.

When the area can no longer support a population, some species of Scandinavian lemmings will scatter in all directions in search of food and shelter. These mass migrations may cause the death of many lemmings from falls or drowning in bodies of water that are too large to swim across. This behavior has lead to the myth that lemmings are suicidal, when in fact they are merely searching for habitat and trying to survive.