Lemmy’s search widget isn’t working for me. Google produced these questions, but asked a year ago. No consensus was reached then.

  • ⠀Q⠀
    link
    22 years ago

    About the name: Wikipedia: Like many other rodents, lemmings have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking food and shelter their natural habitats cannot provide. The Norway lemming and brown lemming are two of the few vertebrates which reproduce so quickly that their population fluctuations are chaotic, rather than following linear growth to a carrying capacity or regular oscillations. Why lemming populations fluctuate with such great variance roughly every four years, before numbers drop to near extinction, is not known.