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The small furry animals' doomed migrations are the stuff of legend, entering the language as a metaphor for the mass behavior of crowds who follow each other in a stampede that leads inevitably to their downfall.  British naturalists, however, have decided the time has come to explode the myth about these maligned animals.

The hamster-like creatures, which thrive in their thousands in arctic conditions and are strong swimmers, have a well-honed instinct for survival, they say.   "Scientists have known for many, many years that this was myth. But  no one wanted to believe them. Lemmings don't leap off cliffs," said Michelle Thompson, the producer of a BBC television program that studied the rodents in one of their natural habitats in Canada.

Far from leaping suicidally to avoid overcrowding and thus make room for new generations, the film-makers found that lemmings actually stayed put, grew fat and bred prolifically as long as food supplies lasted.  Myths about the migrating habits of the lemming grew up over time because of their ability to reproduce in dramatic numbers while hidden under the snow.

"When the thaw comes suddenly there's hundreds of (lemmings) all over the place and nobody could believe that they were breeding under the snow, so the native tribes in Scandinavia and Canada spread stories that they came from outer space," Thompson said.

And it is only a short jump from the widely held belief that lemmings fall from the skies to the image of them tumbling off cliffs into the sea, she said. "It became a word version of Chinese whispers," said Thompson, whose program shows a lemming approaching the edge of a cliff before wisely stopping short.