Lovely photo of Lemming skeleton

This intensely beautiful photo, credited E. Leslie, accompanies a Science News article about how climate change has been negatively impacting the population of Norway lemmings. From Science News:

Norway lemmings, Lemmus lemmus, are about half the size of a guinea pig and live in nests beneath the snow during the winter months. When the snowpack is light and fluffy, warmth from the ground melts small spaces under the snow that the lemmings use to forage for sedges, grasses and mosses without being exposed to predators. But in recent years, warmer winter temperatures have rendered the snow less fluffy. That, in turn, has made the snow more likely to melt and refreeze at ground level, coating the ground with ice and making life more difficult for lemmings.

Climate Change Stifling Lemmings

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

arkizzle

Play online:

http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

~ or ~

http://www.kaagaard.dk/games/spil/lemmings/index.html
Justin France

I’d be checking any near cliff-faces with a Disney film crew hurling the poor things down.

A beautiful image, if not a bit sad. Still giving me urges to play Lemmings, mind.
dbarak

Where are the other lemmings?
Gary61

“He’s dead, Jim – and I can’t bring him back.”
wolfiesma

It reminds me of a short story I read in middle school about a poor dog that was buried at Pompeii. There was a picture that went with the story and it looked a lot like this.

But I do like the crack about clutching the SUV keys. Classic.
alisong76

Oh, nonsense. Someone just forgot to get another lemming build a little bridge for him, than then give him a little umbrella. Blow them all up and restart the level.
Anonymous

The photographer is Erika Leslie. She has taken many photos of living lemmings as well as this little one. She works at the University of Oslo’s field station at Finse, Norway where she has studied the lemmings. She is a very gifted photographer!
urshrew

I laughed pretty loud at that one ALISONG. I played that game so much when I was a kid, and looking back on it, I often would crowd as many of them as I could in one place and blow ‘em to smithereens.

Much like those digital lemmings, this guy seems to be a victim of that human love for destroying things.
alisong76

LOL, urshrew, my brother and I used to do the same – it was especially fun to squeeze 100 into the space one would normally occupy. All those little “Oh noes!” used to crack me up.
nigelstwin

ALISONG ftw..
I had forgotten that lemmings were actual animals that didn’t wear shirt-dresses and have tufts of green hair.
lijn

Although climate change isn’t something to joke about, my first thought upon seeing this photo and the accompanying story was:

Oh no!
Daemon

#4 & #9 – Between the two of you, I have no further comments to make on this.
Patrick Dodds

Is his spine curled round a hand-grenade?
Takuan

beautiful iconography. Needs a little, tiny set of SUV ignition keys clenched in skeletal paw.
arkizzle

I’m impressed, 13 comments and nobody’s dragging out the tired old lemmings+cliff myth.

Good back-hander from Justin France @ 9, though: White Wilderness.