Lemming hordes perish in Swedish roadside 'massacre'

Hordes of lemmings have been spotted leaving the safety of the mountains to make their way down to more inhabited areas, falling victim to traffic and being preyed upon by other animals.“I must have seen a thousand just since Saturday. They are absolutely everywhere. They are swimming about in the lake close to our house, they jump on the ice floes, and they scurry around the outside of our house,“ said holiday-maker Magnus Lundberg, to the local Östersundsposten (ÖP) daily.

Road users are reportedly struggling to avoid the advancing lemming hordes with many of the small furry animals ending up as road kill in what has been described as a real massacre on the roads.

However, Sweden's pets and wild animals alike stand to gain as the lemming-strewn roads present a veritable feast for hungry predators.

Favourable weather has created the conditions for 2011 to become what Swedes call "a real lemming year".

According to Birger Hörnfeldt, of the department of wildlife, fish and environmental studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå, these traditionally occur every 3-4 years.

But the last three decades have seen such unfavourable weather that the number of lemmings had diminished considerably. ...
Lemmings have traditionally been believed to undertake the occasional mass exodus, sometimes to meet their death by following each other off a cliff.

However, today this kind of migration behaviour is believed by experts to be a myth based on lies or at least highly exaggerated.

According to Bengt Landström of the mountain unit at the County Administrative Board in Norrbotten, this may well be a record year for lemmings, but he does not believe in a bona fide ‘lemming exodus’, where the lemmings blindly follow one another to their death.

“No, that kind of lemming migration is just a fairy tale, a tall story,“ he told local paper Piteå Tidningen.

Unfortunately, exodus or no exodus, the move from the mountaintops often means that the little rodents go to their death.

If they are not hit by cars wild or domestic animals are very keen to get their paws on them.

“Our dogs are eating the lemmings while we are out walking. It is not much we can do about it. The dogs just bite down on them, throw them up in the air and then swallow them almost whole. They probably devour between five and ten a day,” Magnus Lundberg told ÖP.  ...

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