Rats - you'll find them almost anywhere humans live, using our ships to cross the oceans with us and taking advantage of the architecture we build. But something strange lurks amidst their ranks - an amalgamation of rodent bodies known as a rat king. Let's take a look at...
- What is a Rat King?
- The Folklore of the Rat King
- Are Rat Kings Real?
- The Biggest Real Rat King
- The Most Recent Rat King
- The Biomechanics of Rat Kings
- Squirrel Kings
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| Rat kings are groups of rodents tangled together by their tails... (sipa) |
What is a Rat King?
The rat king has gone by several names (Rattenkönig in German, roi de rats in French) and these days refers to a bundle of rats, knotted together by their tails to form a screeching wheel of living vermin. It's also been suggested that the French term for a rat king may be a corruption of "rouet de rats" or "wheel of rats."
Another take on the rat king suggests that the amalgamation of rodents was a single elderly rat riding on a mat of subservient rodents like a king being carried by bearers.
The idea of a rat king also had political weight, being used as a metaphor to describe corrupt leaders exploiting the common man. Martin Luther even used the term to describe the Pope when railing against the Catholic hierarchy!
The Folklore of the Rat King
Many people find rats disturbing, so it's no wonder the idea of a knotted ball of the things was viewed with horror. The main bit of folklore associated with rat king (and it shouldn't be much of a surprise) is that they were considered omens of pestilence and ill luck.
There's actually common sense riding on this bit of lore. To have a chance of getting rat king, you'd need a lot of rats in close proximity (more on that later.) They'd also have to be somewhere humans frequently go if there was a real chance of them being seen. It follows then, that you'd expect to encounter rat kings in areas of human habitation with a booming rat population - and that would mean a home for fleas, disease and potentially even the bubonic plague!
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| Domesticated rats can be cute... but wild ones can be a health hazard! (sipa) |
Are Rat Kings Real?
So you might be wondering if rat kings are even real, or if they're just an old urban legend. Well, there are quite a few examples of these rodent monarchs in museums across the world - but some believe these specimens to be fake, creatures assembled post-mortem for display (or even sale.) It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened - one need only look at the Fiji mermaids, supposed sea creatures assembled from desiccated monkeys and fish.
When it comes to why rat kings "must" be fake, the usual argument boils down to rat tails. You see, though they're considered semi-prehensile, a rat's tail isn't as flexible as boiled spaghetti - it contains vertebrae and is an extension of the spine. Some people have argued that this makes it impossible for rat tails to knot around each other, suggesting that the tails are thick and simply can't bend enough. Even if that's true, it doesn't rule out the idea of rat tails getting trapped in some other substance (tree sap, fibers, feces etc.) and getting "glued" together.
The other argument is that a rat caught in a "king" would surely gnaw its tail off to get free rather than staying and starving. After all, animals caught in a trap sometimes amputate their own limb to escape. I think the situation isn't quite the same when it comes to a rat king, as...
- Snares and traps often restrict blood flow and some designs can inflict serious injuries. As a result, the trapped limb can lose feeling (it may even necrotize and die) or be in intense pain.
- The bundle at the center of a rat king is different. There's no snare cutting into the tail, just other rat tails and potentially a soft sticky mass. Even if some fibers of rope or horse hair have become tangled around the tails, they likely have a much more gentle effect than steel jaws or a snare.
- In this case, the tail would probably neither be in intense pain or numb - and as such, the rat would be far less likely to risk docking it's tail.
- Gnawing through one's own tail is a measure of last resort. Not only does the rat rely on it for everything from balance to thermoregulation, a ragged, spine-exposing injury has a real chance of developing a lethal infection. It really is a last, desperate throw of the dice.
- Even pulling too hard is a risk to the rat, as tails can receive a dangerous degloving injury.
- There's also the fact that the rat is still in a huddle of other rats - which tends to reduce their response to stress and could possibly dissuade it from vigorous escape attempts and field surgery.
- Finally, an Estonian rat king discovered in 2021 (we'll look at the case below) contained thirteen rats, two of which had already died.
Personally, I believe that there's enough evidence to support the existence of rat kings (we'll take a look at a few cases below) though I will also say that I'm sure some historical examples were fabricated for fame and profit.
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| A rat king from Altenburg... (Stefan Kühn) |
The Biggest Real Rat King
The largest confirmed rat king ever discovered was found in the rubble of a demolished chimney in 1828 Buchheim, Altenburg. The king was already dead - it had dried into a natural mummy, with the thirty-two black rats comprising it sooty and hairless...but still bearing sharp claws.
The chimney's owner (a miller named Steinbrück) donated the king to the Altenburg Natural Research Society for preservation and display, with the king coming into the possession of the Mauritianum Natural History Museum in 1908. It remains on exhibition there to this day!
The Most Recent Rat King
You might be thinking that rat kings are only a feature of medieval times, but that's not the case. In 2021, a thirteen-rodent rat king was found in Põlva County, Estonia - and amazingly, eleven of the rats were still alive.
The king was even caught on video - you can see it via the Daily Mail or the Estonian ERR News. The video clearly shows a tangled mass at the center of the king, containing the tails of the rats and a mixture of straw, earth and other material - presumably from the floor of the chicken coop in which they were found.
Given that the rats had no long term prospects for survival (restricted movement meant a long, slow starving death... if a predator didn't get them first) and disentangling them seemed hopeless, the surviving rats were put down and the king's remains transported to the University of Tartu Natural History Museum. Interestingly, the museum holds another Estonian rat king from 2005!
Despite the rarity of rat kings (researchers suggest that only fifty-eight reliable sightings have been recorded prior to 2005) another king was reported in Russia earlier in the same year. In this case, the five waterlogged rats were still alive and had a happy ending - the farmer who found them managed to untangle their tails, allowing them to roam free once more!
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| Tree sap is a potential culprit for rat king formation... (Alexandre Juca) |
The Biomechanics of Rat Kings
It seems that the process responsible for creating a rat king has a few elements. The first is that the rodents must be huddled together in close proximity - that's a pretty natural state for rats, especially when the temperature starts to drop. Researchers have even modeled huddling behavior, finding that it might allow the rats to act like a single larger organism for the purposes of regulating temperature!
The next element is some kind of binding agent. Because rat tails don't just bend like a wet noodle, it's a lot to assume that they'd become hopelessly knotted around each other without another factor. Instead, tails dragged through a sticky substance could become adhesive, picking up detritus or even "sticking" to other rats. If rats with sticky tails were sleeping in a huddle, it might also allow the substance to dry or harden like glue.
So what substances could act as the initial adhesive? Tree sap, blood, feces, sebum, mud, clay and tar are all obvious contenders. I think particular attention should be given to wood tar, which was used as an adhesive in construction and shipbuilding (it's also been used in baseball to improve bat grips... or to cheat by tarring the ball!)
Once the rats find themselves sticking to each other, the problem will only get worse. Any muck they traipse through (along with their own feces) could add to the knot, building up into an inescapable ball. In videos of the Estonian rat king mentioned above, such a ball is clearly visible at the center of the rats!
Interestingly, rats possess a grasp reflex similar to that found in human babies, but don't lose it with age. When the fore or hind-paw of a rat is stroked, it automatically flexes to grasp - this is actually used in rat neurological exams. If a group of rats were partially tangled, this reflex might help hold the group together as they involuntarily grab at each other's tails and limbs!
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| Squirrel kings are real as well... (Mavi Atlas) |
Squirrel Kings
On a final note, rodents are not the only creatures known to have "kings" - in 2018 a squirrel king was discovered in Wisconsin. In this case, five young squirrels had become entangled by their tails, which had become matted into a knot of the plastic and grass that comprised their nest. A long-suffering team of vets anesthetized the rodents and managed to separate the tails over a twenty-minute operation. In the same year, a king containing six baby squirrels was rescued in Nebraska!
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