How do lemmings die?

Not by mass suicide, if that’s what you’re thinking.

The suicide idea seems to have originated in the work of nineteenth-century naturalists who had
witnessed (but not understood) the four-year boom-and-bust population cycle of the Norwegian
lemming (Lemmus lemmus).

Lemmings have a phenomenal reproductive capacity. A single female can produce up to eighty
offspring a year. Sudden surges in their numbers once led Scandinavians to think they were
spontaneously generated by the weather.

What actually happens is that mild winters lead to overpopulation that in turn leads to over-grazing.
The lemmings set off into unfamiliar territory in search of food until they pile up against natural
obstacles like cliffs, lakes and seas. The lemmings keep coming. Panic and violence ensue. Accidents happen. But it isn’t suicide.

A secondary myth has evolved which is that the whole idea of mass suicide was invented by the
1958 Walt Disney film White Wilderness. It’s true that the film was a complete fake. It was filmed in land-locked, lemming-free Alberta, Canada: the lemmings had to be bussed in from several hundred miles away in Manitoba. The shots of the ‘migration’ were made using a few lemmings on a snowcovered turntable. The notorious final scene – where lemmings plunge into the sea to the doom-laden voice-over of Winston Hibbler: ‘This is the last chance to turn back, yet over they go, casting themselves out bodily into space’ – was created by the film-makers simply throwing the lemmings into a river.

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But Disney was only guilty of trying to recreate an already entrenched story. Here it is described in
the most influential children’s reference book of the early twentieth century, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, published in 1908: ‘They march straight forward, over hill and dell, through gardens, farms, villages, into wells and ponds to poison water and cause typhoid… on and on to the sea, then into the water to destruction…

It is sad and terrible, but if the dismal exodus did not occur lemmings would long ago have eaten
Europe bare.’ Publisher: moath - 9:21 AM

What’s the largest living thing?

It’s a mushroom.

And it’s not even a particularly rare one. You’ve probably got the honey fungus ( Armillaria
ostoyae) in your garden, growing on a dead tree-stump.
For your sake, let’s hope it doesn’t reach the size of the largest recorded specimen, in Malheur
National Forest in Oregon. It covers 890 hectares (2,200 acres) and is between 2,000 and 8,000
years old. Most of it is underground in the form of a massive mat of tentacle-like white mycelia (the
mushroom’s equivalent of roots). These spread along tree roots, killing the trees and peeping up
through the soil occasionally as innocent-looking clumps of honey mushrooms.
The giant honey fungus of Oregon was initially thought to grow in separate clusters throughout the
forest, but researchers have now confirmed it is the world’s single biggest organism, connected under the soil.

STEPHEN What, or which, is the largest living thing on earth?
BILL France. Publisher: moath - 5:22 PM

How many nostrils have you got?

Four. Two you can see; two you can’t.

This discovery came from observing how fish breathe. Fish get their oxygen from water. Most of
them have two pairs of nostrils, a forward-facing set for letting water in and a pair of ‘exhaust pipes’ for letting it out again.

The question is, if humans evolved from fishes, where did the other pair of nostrils go?
The answer is that they migrated back inside the head to become internal nostrils called choannae
– Greek for ‘funnels’. These connect to the throat and are what allow us to breathe through our noses.

To do this they somehow had to work their way back through the teeth. This sounds unlikely but
scientists in China and Sweden have recently found a fish called Kenichthys campbelli – a 395-
million-year-old fossil – that shows this process at its half-way stage. The fish has two nostril-like
holes between its front teeth.

Kenichthys campbelli is a direct ancestor of land animals, able to breathe in both air and water.
One set of nostrils allowed it to lie in the shallows and eat while the other poked out of the water a
bit like a crocodile’s.

Similar gaps between the teeth can also be seen at an early stage of the human embryo. When they
fail to join up, the result is a cleft palate. So one ancient fish explains two ancient human mysteries.
The most recent research on noses, incidentally, shows that we use each of our two external
nostrils to detect different smells, breathing different amounts of air into each to create a kind of nasal stereo. Publisher: moath - 10:43 AM

How many wives did Henry VIII have?

We make it two. Or four if you’re a Catholic.

Henry’s fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled. This is very different from divorce.
Legally, it means the marriage never took place.

There were two grounds for the annulment. Anne and Henry never consummated the marriage; that is, they never had intercourse. Refusal or inability to consummate a marriage is still grounds for
annulment today.

In addition, Anne was already betrothed to Francis, Duke of Lorraine when she married Henry. At
that time, the formal act of betrothal was a legal bar to marrying someone else.
All parties agreed no legal marriage had taken place. So that leaves five.

The Pope declared Henry’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn illegal, because the King was still
married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Henry, as head of the new Church of England, declared in turn that his first marriage was invalid
on the legal ground that a man could not sleep with his brother’s widow. The King cited the Old
Testament, which he claimed as ‘God’s Law’, whether the Pope liked it or not.

Depending on whether you believe the Pope or the King, this brings it down to either four or three
marriages.

Henry annulled his marriage to Anne Boleyn just before he had her executed for adultery. This was
somewhat illogical: if the marriage had never existed, Anne could hardly be accused of betraying it.

He did the same with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. All the evidence suggests she was
unfaithful to him before and during their marriage. This time, Henry passed a special act making it
treasonable for a queen to commit adultery. Once again, he also had the marriage annulled.
So that makes four annulments, and only two incontestably legal marriages.

Apart from Henry’s last wife, Catherine Parr (who outlived him), the lady who got off lightest was
Anne of Cleves. After their annulment, the King showered her with gifts and the official title of
‘beloved sister’. She visited court often, swapping cooks, recipes, and household gadgets with the
man who had never been her husband.

JEREMY CLARKSON He had major, major commitment problems, didn’t he? I imagine,
every time, he said, ‘Oh, it’s not you. It’s me.’ And then, I suppose, they had a trial
separation, which involved a brief trial and a very major separation! Publisher: moath - 10:40 AM