Are humans the only animals that commit suicide?

[Alexander's Horse]

sheep are stupid, if you don't show them where the water is in a paddock they will all die of thirst before they find it

[Dinner]

Are we all just going to ignore the fact that this was all a myth and that Oerdin is wrong as usual?

The video was faked, eh? You're ****ing stupid, Speer, just ****ing stupid.

[regexcellent]

I have been told that sheep will drown or get stuck if it rains too hard and you leave them outside because the wool absorbs the water and they get weighed down by it. True/false?

[Al B. Sure!]

The video was faked, eh? You're ****ing stupid, Speer, just ****ing stupid.

Are you retarded? Yes. It was faked. The film crew came out and admitted it!

Please tell me you're being sarcastic or trolling because this Oerdin is always wrong meme is getting absurd in its pervasiveness.

[Al B. Sure!]

I have been told that sheep will drown or get stuck if it rains too hard and you leave them outside because the wool absorbs the water and they get weighed down by it. True/false?

Do you own a wool peacoat? Peacoats were naval coats. That should answer your question.

[giblets]

Do you own a wool peacoat? Peacoats were naval coats. That should answer your question.

How does that answer his question? I'm pretty sure wool, like any fabric, will get heavier if it gets wet.

[Al B. Sure!]

How does that answer his question? I'm pretty sure wool, like any fabric, will get heavier if it gets wet.

Wool is water resistant, especially when it's still on the sheep and covered with lanolin.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I have been told that sheep will drown or get stuck if it rains too hard and you leave them outside because the wool absorbs the water and they get weighed down by it. True/false?

I've seen sheep in the dead of winter in Montana when the normal snow depth was twice as tall as they were. They huddle together so the combination of body heat and trampling beats the snow down. Sheep are only especially stupid when they're running in a panic - typical low on the food chain animal, because they really can't see worth anything. So they just run in a direction while really having no idea what's coming up next.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Are you retarded? Yes. It was faked. The film crew came out and admitted it!

Please tell me you're being sarcastic or trolling because this Oerdin is always wrong meme is getting absurd in its pervasiveness.

Lemmings don't have the mens rea to commit suicide, but they do have an uncontrollable migration urge which is triggered by various events in their environment, and they will swim or run places that are hazardous. They're rodents. Not much brainpower there.

[loinburger]

A lot of animals will kill themselves in the act of procreating, e.g. salmon, male praying mantises, male black widows. I don't think that this counts as suicide, though - they're not killing themselves out of despair, they're killing themselves in order that their genes will be perpetuated; salmon don't have much choice when it comes to procreating, and male insects have a better chance of inseminate a female if they feed themselves to the female.

[Al B. Sure!]

Lemmings don't have the mens rea to commit suicide, but they do have an uncontrollable migration urge which is triggered by various events in their environment, and they will swim or run places that are hazardous. They're rodents. Not much brainpower there.

Apolyton Twilight Zone at its finest. You actually think Oerdin can be right on ANYTHING? The man would be a genius and a prophet if he said the opposite of his impulses.

http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp

[giblets]

Cyclical explosions in population do occasionally induce lemmings to attempt to migrate to areas of lesser population density. When such a migration occurs, some lemmings die by falling over cliffs or drowning in lakes or rivers.

So there was nothing incorrect about what MichaeltheGreat wrote, was there?

[Al B. Sure!]

So there was nothing incorrect about what MichaeltheGreat wrote, was there?

He was responding to me telling Oerdin Lemmings going over cliffs, as represented in the Disney film Oerdin posted, is a myth and that the film crew staged it.

The sequence of events makes it appear to me that MtG was either defending Oerdin's errancy or giving an explanation to the film, unknowing that the film crew is known to have staged the scene. The latter does not require MtG to defend Oerdin's assertion that lemmings commit suicide.

In either case, MtG may have been factually correct in the words he said but his reason for saying them, at least interpreted by me through a reasonable assessment of the course of the discussion, was incorrect.

[MichaeltheGreat]

It's simple. My reason for posting something is that it's factually correct. Or else a good troll that will get a rise out of the target. Sometimes both. I generally don't give a **** about the posters, their posts or their sources. That particular film, faked or not, does represent a phenomena that occurs with lemmings. The dumb littlle buggers are wired to go someplace else in collective response to food supply or population pressures, but they're not wired with a map or GPS in their heads. They're food chain filler material. They don't need a high survival rate.

Oerdin's citing the film, serriously or facetiously (see his post above the cite) does not negate the fact that a similar phenomena does occur in nature, but it's not easy to observe live. Just in the occasional sharp increase in frequency of drowned and smashed rodents that didn't manange to become fish or bird food.

Your interpretation may have been reasonable, but its accuracy is fatally flawed in the assumption that I actually give a rat's (or lemming's ) ass about what anyone says or thinks.

[giblets]

He was responding to me telling Oerdin Lemmings going over cliffs, as represented in the Disney film Oerdin posted, is a myth and that the film crew staged it.

The sequence of events makes it appear to me that MtG was either defending Oerdin's errancy or giving an explanation to the film, unknowing that the film crew is known to have staged the scene. The latter does not require MtG to defend Oerdin's assertion that lemmings commit suicide.

In either case, MtG may have been factually correct in the words he said but his reason for saying them, at least interpreted by me through a reasonable assessment of the course of the discussion, was incorrect.

The film event was staged with the intent of recreating something lemmings do in the wild: attempting to cross a body of water that is too big during migration and consequently drowning. For some reason it's hard to obtain authentic footage of this. Perhaps the film creators should have asked the lemmings about when they were scheduling the next quasi-suicidal migration.