Lemming

by Graham, Bank Street School for Children

The lemming is a rodent and the most common animal in the Arctic. The most common lemming is the Norwegian one.

Looks
Food
Environment
Reproduction
Life Cycle

Looks

The lemming is a plump little creature, and part of the rodent family. Lemmings are four to six inches long. They have short tails and fur covered feet. They look like mice.

Food

Lemmings eat twigs in the winter and berries and leaves in the summer. Lemmings control the amount of animals. In the years when there are a lot of lemmings, a lot of other animals can live.

Lemmings build mile long tunnels through snow and underground for their whole family to live in. They start their tunnels on top of the snow and dig through the soil to make the rest of the tunnel. Their tunnels have many rooms and each room has a purpose like sleeping.

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Mating and Reproduction

Lemmings breed during the winter and they can have up to ten babies a year which mature in two months. Usually, there can be seven lemmings born in one year. After what is called "The lemming year," the year in which many are born, for the next 3 or 4 years there aren't a lot of lemmings born. But, during the lemming year, lemmings reproduce more than any other years, which causes the Arctic to be overpopulated with lemmings. During the lemming year times there are more lemmings than any other animal in the world.

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Life Cycles

Lemmings don't live very long. There's an 80% chance that they could get killed on any day. The lemming's predators are hawks, owls, weasels, foxes and basically all Arctic animals. Winter is the safest time for the lemming. Predators cannot see them because the snow covers up their tunnels.

The overpopulation of lemmings overwhelms the lemmings which causes them to fall off cliffs and drown. They get irritated with one another and it drives them crazy which causes them to leave. In the years when there are many lemmings, sometimes they run out of food, so they are forced to leave their homes. They are stubborn little creatures and nothing stands in their way. When anything comes in their path they find a way to pass the obstacle. If there was a river in their way, they would dive in and swim across. But sometimes, if the river is too wide, the lemmings drown because they didn't pay attention to whether or not they could swim across the width of the river.

People think that lemmings commit suicide by jumping off cliffs or drowning. Maybe it seems like suicide attempts, but the lemmings are really just making mistakes and they sometimes die from them.

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