Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for June 08, 2013

are you serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS? also wow just got here when the comic was added

please, enough with the lemmings!

Fred, always the last to know…

To lean over like that without falling, those little guys must be clinging tightly to each other with their toes; that’s a pretty good indication that they don’t really want to go.

No more!

Why Lemmings No In Jail with Larry?

This is getting trite. But the lemmings know they’re the only ones left to carry the humor of the strip.

wasn’t there a game called lemmings?

The whole thing about suicidal lemmings is a cruel lie. Disney nature films paid local children to chuck them off a cliff while they filmed below. I wont even start on the bear cub

Fred Five is right to question the Lemming Ethos. You’ll notice he’s no Bob!

Someone needs to push them all off from behind so we’ll be done with this chapter.

@alexikakos….good eye….that is very funny.

Come on guys, it’s like Popeye says: “When life hands you a lemming…”

Lemming, Lemming, Lemming of the BDA…

Somehow don’t think Fred will start showing up for those meetings . . . . ☻

I like the lemmings strips because I check the comments to see how far down we get the first comment about how it’s just an urban legend. Took 28 today, might be a new record.

I haven’t thought about it, but have the Lemming strips mostly been run on Saturdays? Gives me the idea that Pastis isn’t too fond of them, either. Either that or he thinks the suicide topic is a little edgy.I don’t mind them myself, but if they all ran at once it would get tiring.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Walt.

The other characters are much funnier than the lemmings, and I’m sick of cartoonists perpetuating the myth that lemmings are suicidal.

if we just take this strip as it comes, we would all be a lot happier.

I’m thinking the lemmings episodes are the result of having read “Yertle the Turtle” too many times as a wee lad…….

well suicide is against the law(attempting not committing), maybe they’er going to be next in the slammer

Still, Speed Bump is winning the “funniest strip going” award for a few weeks now.

STOP WITH THE URBAN LEGANDS ABOUT LEMMINGS AS TRUTH, IT SHOWS YOUR IGNORANCE LEVEL!!!

Misconceptions about lemmings go back many centuries. In the 1530s, the geographer Zeigler of Strasbourg proposed the theory that the creatures fell out of the sky during stormy weather (also featured in the folklore of the Inupiat/Yupik at Norton Sound), and then died suddenly when the grass grew in spring.6 This description was contradicted by the natural historian Ole Worm, who accepted that lemmings could fall out of the sky, but claimed they had been brought over by the wind rather than created by spontaneous generation. Worm first published dissections of a lemming, which showed they are anatomically similar to most other rodents, and the work of Carl Linnaeus proved they had a natural origin.78

When large numbers of lemmings migrate, some of them will inevitably drown while crossing rivers and lakes, like this one in Norway. Lemmings became the subject of a popular misconception that they commit mass suicide when they migrate. It is not a mass suicide, but the result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many may drown if the body of water is so wide as to stretch their physical capability to the limit. This fact, combined with the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, gave rise to the misconception.9

The misconception of lemming “mass suicide” is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. It was well enough known to be mentioned in The Marching Morons, a 1951 short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth. In 1955, Disney Studio illustrator Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title “The Lemming with the Locket”. This comic, which was inspired by a 1953 American Mercury article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs.1011 Even more influential was the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness, which won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, in which staged footage was shown with lemmings jumping into certain death after faked scenes of mass migration.12 A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Cruel Camera, found the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown from Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they did not jump off the cliff, but were in fact launched off the cliff using a turntable.13

This same act was also used in the Apple Computer 1985 Super Bowl commercial “Lemmings” and the popular 1991 video game Lemmings, in which the player must stop the lemmings from mindlessly marching over cliffs or into traps. In a 2010 board game by GMT games, “Leaping Lemmings”, players must maneuver lemmings across a board while avoiding hazards, and successfully launch them off a cliff.

Because of their association with this odd behavior, lemming “suicide” is a frequently used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This metaphor is seen many times in popular culture, such as in the video game Lemmings, and in episodes of Red Dwarf and Adult Swim’s show Robot Chicken. In the 8th episode of season 1 of Showtime’s The Borgias, the Pope’s second son Juan refers to the college of cardinals as lemmings when they flee the Vatican in anticipation of an impending French invasion. The Blink 182 song “Lemmings” also uses this metaphor, as does the unrelated song of the same name by English progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator (from their 1971 album Pawn Hearts), and the 1973 stage show National Lampoon’s Lemmings starring John Belushi and mocking post-Woodstock groupthink.14

I suppose the lemmings will end up in jail now…

Meetings are VERY important, Fred.

Now it’s about to cost you your life.

xxx

“♫♪ We want lemmings ♪♫ ♫♪ We want lemmings ♪♫ ♫♪ We want lemmings ♪♫ ♫♪ We want lemmings ♪♫Please don’t listen to the miserable moaners Stephan.”

Ditto

I love the lemmings, can’t wait until they get some jail time.

How about a panel where the lemmings push Stephen over the edge? The Lemming’s Revenge!

Ok, all the other’s are standing on his shoulder. He should just walk off the edge with them up there.

Stop and think about it. If he can get all the Lemming to jump then he can stay back and be the only Lemming with all the “Lemming-ettes”.

Probably till the cows come home.

Re: “One has to wonder why Pastis insists on perpetuating the age-old urban lemming myth…”Just as a guess, but 1) because this is a comic strip and 2) because it’s funny?

I love the matter-of-fact comments by various characters in the last panels, like today’s.

Maybe as you all jump, you can do the lemming merengue fly…

Feel free to groan. :-)

I LIKE a little lemming with my tea in the morning!

I thought they just said there was no one to carry on the strip accept goat? Apparently not.

Can’t the lemmings carry on the humor?