Lemmings

By: Grant Hummer and
Daniel Babai

Description: Lemmings are rodents and they look like guinea pigs but lemmings only grow up to 5 inches. Lemmings have large teeth that are used for gnawing. Lemmings have three colors: brown, white, and brown and white.

Habitat: Lemmings are real natives of the Arctic. The lemming is found at the northern region of the world. The Arctic lemming makes it's home as near its food supply of sedges and grasses as it possibly can. These plants grow high enough to also offer some protection from the fox and the owl. Lemmings live underground. They dig their nest about three or four feet under the snow. A colony of lemmings may have tunnels under the matted grass and moss extending over several acres. The underground nursery is reached by many winding and twisting tunnels. The nest itself is made of grass and moss and lined with hair and feathers.

Behavior: The drowning of lemmings was once thought to be a mass suicide by crazed, overcrowded lemmings. More likely it is just bad judgment on their part. Lemmings are small and have no way of estimating the size of the ocean. From the shore it probably appears to them as another large river. Lemmings want to keep their population low because they start running out of food when their population gets high. Lemmings can grow their population up to 1,000!

Birth: During the winter family after family is born into the lemming colony. Each mother lemming has several litters. There may be three babies in a litter or four, or five, or even eleven. Just a few weeks later these young lemmings start having babies of their own. Lemmings are terrific. Lemming colonies Have a four year cycle. In the first year lemmings are scarce. In the second year they increase a little. In the third year they are numerous and in the fourth year their food is scarce.

Food: Lemmings can change a feeding area into a desert. Lemmings eat Arctic plants and mouse like voles. On cloudy, still, dark nights lemmings range far from their protective tunnels in search of food.

Predator/Enemies: Lemmings are eaten by the Arctic fox and the snow owl. There is an animal called an ermine that is thin enough to enter the lemming's home. And eat them.