Timeline for Do lemmings commit suicide by jumping off cliffs?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 17, 2011 at 21:17 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | Yikes, Disney was evil! I can't believe they did that... What on earth prompted them to even think of such a thing? | |
| May 14, 2011 at 12:21 | comment | added | user288 | Neither smoking nor drinking do not prevent you from having children. On the contrary, alcoholic asocial families usually have more children than your average persons. Jumping from the cliff, on the other hand... | |
| Apr 24, 2011 at 15:56 | comment | added | Kit Sunde | @DVK - I guess that depends on your gender since men typically buy girls drinks to make themselves more attractive. Unless you have a thing for drunk people. :) | |
| Apr 24, 2011 at 9:19 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @Monday That would work, yes. | |
| Apr 22, 2011 at 21:27 | comment | added | user5341 | @Konrad Rudolph - isn't drinking making OTHER people more attractive, not yourself? | |
| Apr 22, 2011 at 18:45 | comment | added | Monkey Tuesday | @konrad if they reproduced prior to this mass suicide, abandoning the young in the nest or something, it could theoretically continue, because the jumpers would reproduce at presumably the same rate as the non-jumpers. But you are right, this sort of behavior probably wouldn't last very long before the suicide mechanism would be selected out, or the species would go extinct. | |
| Apr 22, 2011 at 14:03 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @Monkey If that (= natural selection in action) were the case then the allele for suicide would be extinct (or near enough) in the next generation. It simply has no mechanism of proliferating. | |
| Apr 22, 2011 at 14:00 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @DVK Thankfully (for evolution) that’s not the same. The survival rate of an allele for suicide before rearing offsprings is exactly zero. It cannot, in principle, proliferate. Cigarette smoking and drinking also diminishes comparative fitness but not as drastic, and may potentially have other advantages (for example, it may make somebody more attractive in the eyes of prospective mates, just like the peacock’s tail). | |
| Apr 22, 2011 at 2:19 | comment | added | Monkey Tuesday | @konrad, wouldn't that sort of behavior (if it were legitimately occurring and for the record, it's not) just indicate that lemmings are somehow fundamentally unfit, and therefore still be consistent with evolutionary principles and merely reflect natural selection in action? | |
| Apr 21, 2011 at 15:54 | comment | added | user5341 | @Konrad - humans smoke tobacco. Russians drank themselves to the point of demographic collapse. Hey, I just proved evolution wrong! :) | |
| Apr 20, 2011 at 21:11 | vote | accept | Monkey Tuesday | ||
| Apr 19, 2011 at 12:59 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | +1. Furthermore, lemmings indiscriminately committing suicide like this would be strong evidence against evolution by natural selection. | |
| Apr 19, 2011 at 4:05 | history | edited | Kit Sunde | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added quote on how the Disney movie was made from the Washington post. Fixed date.
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| Apr 19, 2011 at 1:32 | history | answered | Henry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |