Were you ever under the impression that lemmings jumped to their doom en masse every once in a while? Utter nonsense, and you know who was behind it? The same folks who made your childhood fucking magical. Presented as a documentary, the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness showed lemmings flying off a cliff as though they were doing this of their own accord, unable to get their little lemming shit together.
In reality the filmmakers staged it, flinging the rodents to their premature end. A different species of lemming does go cliff diving, but those fuckers can swim. Rather than mindless followers, encounters with the ferocious critters have given them the description of “bloodthirsty hairy berserkers.”
Disney couldn’t possibly have misled me about anything else, right?
Today’s Moment of Science… Hey, did you know? Bullshit Disney taught me edition.
The clownfish has a type of hermaphroditism in which they all start off life as male. In a school of clownfish, there’s a larger breeding pair and the rest of the group are much smaller. Only one fish in the pack is female at any given time, typically the largest and strongest one. When the female dies, the reigning dominant male in the pack will switch to female, and the next largest male gets swole and steps in as the new man of the house.
In scientific reality as the largest remaining fish in the pack, Nemo’s dad Marlin would have become Nemo’s mom Marlene after the accident. And uh… since there weren’t any other clownfish left, Nemo would have grown to become half of a newly formed breeding pair with their parent. But despite the pearl clutching on twitter, Disney isn’t teaching your kids all that much about genitals.
The house in Up was lifted by about 20,000 balloons. To be fair, that’s a lot of goddamn balloons. But before you start stockpiling helium tanks for someday, estimates suggest it would have taken closer to 23-31 million balloons. Because they have that kind of budget, National Geographic built a relatively tiny, one-ton house and attached 300 enormous helium-filled weather balloons. The structure made it up to 10,000 feet.
Houses typically weigh upwards of 80,000-160,000lbs, so when you want to move maybe suck it up and deal with one of those pod companies like the rest of us plebes.
In Star Wars (which is a Disney property now so fuck you, it counts), you can hear them pew-pewing across the cosmos. But space even a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, has no air molecules to carry sound. So in space, nobody can hear Star Wars fans complain.
Kevin the pheasant in Up is revealed to be, surprise, a lady bird. Howthefuckever, her appearance is based on the Himalayan Monal pheasant. Females of the species have grey and brown coats. Sexual dimorphism dictates that only the males of the species have those fabulous feathers. The movie’s director has an explanation though: it’s a mythical bird, so fuck everything we know about birds I guess.
Aladdin’s animal pal, Abu, is a capuchin monkey. They have itsy dexterous paws, prehensile tails, and they’ll eat damn near anything. They also have a less than adorable habit though of cleaning their paws off by peeing on them. Maybe Aladdin should have wished for an animal that’s potty trained.
What’s an old school Disney movie without love at first sight? People do report experiencing it, but is it love or is it that they just saw a good looking person? In one study, men report experiencing it more than women, it’s more likely to happen when catching a glimpse of an attractive person, and it typically starts as a one-sided feeling. A 2017 study suggests it’s not love or even lust, but it’s a feeling that makes us more deeply open to the idea of a relationship.
So maybe don’t marry the first guy who shows up at your door with your missing glass slipper, but idk, slide into his DMs if he’s cute or whatever.
This has been your Moment of Science, reminding you that this is mainly a science column, so if you want a debunking of Pocahontas, ask James Fell.
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