The rat king - who is this, what is this creature? The German storyteller Ernst Hoffmann made him one of the characters in his immortal Nutcracker, whose plot was borrowed from ancient legends. The real existence of this animal has long been questioned. The mere mention of him terrified the superstitious inhabitants of medieval Europe.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the mention of the rat king caused an ironic grin among zoologists. Scientists believed that the multi-headed rat was the work of jokers who tied several rodents by their tails. However, it was not ruled out that the rats are warming themselves tightly to each other, creating the visual effect of a mythological creature. And only a case, thanks to which several unique individuals fell into the hands of scientists, allowed serious research to begin.
Modern science knows that the rat king is born as a result of the fact that even in the womb of the mother, several rat pups grow together with their tails. The result is a single being, consisting of three to seven individuals. It happens that kings are found from forty-five or more rats. With age, the size of the rat king increases and, which has not yet been explained by scientists, the number of its heads increases.
The appearance of a rat king in a flock leads to the fact that even the dominant males and the most aggressive females begin to obey him meekly, carry him food and carry him on their backs. It happens that several warring flocks unite under the leadership of the rat king, creating a huge social community, subordinate to their amazing leader. Such facts made it possible for some researchers to put forward an unusual hypothesis according to which the rat king, deprived of the ability to make any sounds, has special telepathic abilities that allow him to control large rat masses.
The Rat King at the Mauritian Museum of Natural History (Altenburg, Germany).
In one of the laboratories, an experiment was carried out, during which the rat king was placed in a separate cage. His kinsmen, having lost their leader, at first showed anxiety and even refused to eat. However, the very next day, their life went back to normal. At the same time, the rat king continued his hunger strike and after a while died of exhaustion. In another experiment, zoologists surgically divided the rat king. As a result, the individuals that made up the king turned into ordinary rats, devoid of any unusual abilities and having lost their mystical influence on their relatives …
In the fall of 1918, the outskirts of the German city of Essen experienced terrible events. The endless yellowish field outside the city was covered with thousands of rats hurrying away, the front rows of which carried on their backs a huge, many-headed creature. This phenomenon sowed panic among the locals, who considered the flight of rodents with their leader a bad omen. Indeed, a day later, the neighborhood was engulfed in a strong fire, which very soon crept up to Essen …
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Many legends and traditions were associated with the rat king in the Middle Ages in Europe. He was considered an accomplice of the devil and an executor of the will of evil spirits, capable of sending pestilence, hunger and natural disasters. There was a belief that the rat king is able to turn into a man with a tail hidden under his dress. Such a rat-man supposedly has the ability to hear through walls, read other people's thoughts and subjugate the will of other people.
One of the Hanoverian legends tells how in the 18th century a certain Martha married a young and wealthy burgher, with whom she was madly in love. On their wedding night, it turned out that she was in bed with the rat king. Struck by this discovery, the young wife fell into a lethargic sleep, during which her house was filled with hordes of gray rodents. Soon the townspeople learned about the terrible incident that happened to Marta, and set fire to the house. The fire killed the young woman, the rat king, and hundreds of his subjects.
In the city chronicles of Darmstadt, it is mentioned that in 1739 the locals found a huge rat king, which, upon seeing people, split into two smaller ones. When people tried to kill one of them, three of his heads gnawed each other's throats. The townspeople threw another king into a fire, the flame of which immediately turned into an ominous green …
And nowadays, rats give a person a lot of trouble. However, when you see a multi-headed gray monster, do not rush to bow to him right away. It is possible that this is not the rat king, but just an ugly product of a gene mutation caused by modern ecology.
On a cold January 2005 morning in the village of Saru in southern Estonia, farmer Rein Kiev and his son made an interesting discovery. On the sandy floor of their barn, they found a group of 16 rats, whose tails were inexplicably tangled in a knot. The rats squeaked and struggled to escape, but the harder they tried, the more the knot tightened. The animals, apparently, tried to dig out of the narrow burrow, but in the struggle with each other, some of them died under the sand. The seven rats in the ball were already dead. Rain's son decided to end the devilish scene by taking a stick and killing the rest of the unfortunate animals.
Rhine Kiev did not know then, but what he discovered was an extremely rare phenomenon called the "Rat King".
Most people associate the phrase "rat king" with the evil hero of the fairy tale "The Nutcracker" - a huge rat with three heads, commanding its subjects. This is how, in the opinion of an ordinary person, a king in a rat kingdom looks like.
Someone thinks more pragmatically and considers such a king to be a rat sitting at the top of the hierarchical pyramid and controlling its "subjects". It is the "servants" who provide him with food, drink and other benefits, although outwardly the ruler is no different from his subordinates.
Likewise, a rat king is not called any individual who occupies a privileged position in a rat colony. Although there is a certain hierarchy in the rat colony, it is not customary to call its "leader" a king. Moreover, scientists strongly doubt that rats with tangled tails are capable of long life and occupy at least some significant place in the hierarchical pyramid.
What is the rat king really like from the point of view of science?
From a scientific point of view, the rat king is a rare natural phenomenon in which the tails of several rats are intertwined so tightly that animals cannot untangle them. Animals caught in such trouble are not able to coordinate their movements and, as a result, cannot purposefully move and get food, and therefore quickly die of hunger.
The main mystery of the rat kings is that no one has ever found them alive - only the finds of long-withered corpses are documented. There are no photos, no videos, no reports of scientists about living rat kings, which means there is no firm conviction that such kings can live at least some time.
On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that rats' tails twine into an unraveling knot after death. Quite the opposite, the version that it is because of the constant bustle of the animals, their tails can form such a knot, looks plausible.
It is also plausible to assume that, in fact, tangled tails do not allow the animals to normally get food and lead to death.
After all, it is known that rats cannot fast for more than 3-4 days. This means that after tangling their tails, the animals are doomed.
Most scientists interpret this data as follows: for rare reasons, rats' tails stick together and get entangled, after which the animals die relatively quickly either from hunger or from the same reasons that caused the tails to be entangled. And these reasons can be quite commonplace, despite the uniqueness of their consequences.
Reasons why rats might grow their tails
There are several hypotheses about the reasons for the appearance of rat kings. Considering them, you need to take into account the factual data:
- All rat kings were found only in areas with a temperate and cold climate;
- This phenomenon is known only for black and rice rats, as well as mice. The rat kings are not known among the pasukas and have never been found.
- Some researchers believe that rats "grow together" with their tails because of life in very close quarters, where the tails themselves are constantly intertwined and sooner or later can tie into a knot.
Other experts believe that the reasons for weaving are unsanitary conditions, in which the tails of the animals stick together due to food debris, blood, dirt and earth.
But these hypotheses do not explain all the facts. It is not clear, for example, why kings are not found in the tropics, where rats are more numerous, live in very dense colonies and often arrange nests in the litter of gardens and plantations, among rotting foliage and fruits? After all, the probability of sticking tails here is higher …
A more probable theory is that rats' tails freeze when they spend the night in cold burrows. Animals enter such shelters in large numbers to warm themselves, but on especially cold nights even their accumulation does not provide sufficient temperature - as a result, the moisture on the hairs freezes, the tails stick together. Unsanitary conditions here also contribute to sticking of tails (often they turn out to be smeared with excrement), but this is not the main reason. After waking up, the animals try to scatter, rush in different directions and become even more entangled.
It is enough for a few dozen hairs on two (or more) tails to stick together so that the animals could not separate them without injury. A person who has ever adhered to frozen metal with his tongue understands such a phenomenon.
In addition, the hypothesis of freezing of tails explains some of the facts. Gray rats do not have "kings", because their tails are short and less mobile than black ones, it is more difficult to confuse them. In warm climates, no rats get into conditions under which their tails can freeze to each other.
Therefore, it is freezing during collective overnight stays that is considered the most reliable reason for the appearance of rat kings. It means, by the way, that such an event is only a tragedy for the animals. They certainly are not fed by their relatives, they certainly do not have any "power" and are doomed to painful death from hunger, cold and stress.
The same theory explains why no living rat kings were found. Not only is this phenomenon very rare, but animals with tangled tails cannot get out of their shelters and get caught by humans. After the animals were trapped, they die of hunger on the fifth or seventh day.
The probability is negligible that it is during these days that a person will find and open a shelter. And even if the case from Estonia is true, it is the very exception that proves the rule.
The Rat King is a mythical animal mentioned in European legends. It is believed that the Rat King consists of several rats that have grown together or knotted with their tails. Other rats allegedly feed and care for their king.
Sometimes in the habitats of rats, clusters of individuals with tied tails, often broken or damaged, are found. Such "nests" are called "Rat King". There are reports that they found living "rat kings", but only the facts of the discovery of burial grounds are documented. Various hypotheses have been put forward about the origin of such clusters.
"The Rat King" is described in the book by Alfred Edmund Brehm "Animal Life. General history of the animal kingdom ":
Rats living in the wild are subject to a very special disease: several of them grow together with their tails and form the so-called rat king, about which in the old days they had, of course, a different concept than now, when he can be seen in almost every museum. Previously, they thought that the rat king in a golden crown sits on a throne of several subjects who have grown together among themselves and from here decides the fate of the entire rat kingdom! In any case, it is true that sometimes there are quite a large number of rats tightly entwined with tails, they can hardly move and compassionate rats out of pity bring them food. Until now, they do not yet know the real reason for this phenomenon. It is thought that some particular sweat on the tails of rats causes them to stick together, but no one can say anything positive.
The author of the well-known modern report about the "rat king" in the scientific literature did not observe the "rat king" in a living state and refers to eyewitness accounts. He hypothesizes that rats can stick together or freeze their tails while sleeping in a common nest at a very low ambient temperature, and after waking up, trying to free themselves, they form a "rat king". There is also another hypothesis - if a large brood of young rat pups is in a narrow space (nest), then their fragile, flexible tails are intertwined when swarming and playing. With very rapid growth in rats, the tail ossifies and the brood becomes the rat king. In general, there is no evidence of the existence of living "rat kings".
In Thuringia, in the city of Altenburg, there is the largest Rat Kings known to science. The mummified remains of the "King", consisting of 32 rats, were found in a fireplace at a mill in Buchheim in 1828. The rat king canned with alcohol was shown in the museums of Hamburg, Gmelin, Göttingen and Stuttgart.
In general, the number of known finds of rat kings is small. According to various sources, 35-50 cases are known.
The earliest document containing information about the rat kings dates back to 1564. After black rats were supplanted by gray rats in the 18th century, this phenomenon began to decline. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, several cases of the discovery of rat kings have been recorded; the latest cases occurred on 10 April 1986 in France (Vendee) and 16 January 2005 in Estonia (Võrumaa).
The most famous examples of "rat kings" are formed from black rats (Rattus rattus). The only find involving the Sawa rats (Rattus rattus brevicaudatus) occurred on March 23, 1918, in Bogor, Java, where a rat king of ten young field rats was found. Similar "gluing" of other species were also found: in April 1929, a group of young wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) was reported from Holstein, and from there they reported about a "squirrel king", a sample of which is allegedly kept at the Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg. The Rat Kings should not be confused with the Siamese twins, which come in many forms. In "rat kings", animals grow together only after birth, but are separated during childbirth.
The "Rat King", discovered in 1963 by the Dutch farmer P. van Nijnatten at Rucphen (from the town of Rucphen) and made famous by the cryptozoologist M. Schneider, consisted of seven rats. X-rays showed the formation of calluses when their tails were broken, which proves that these animals should have lived in this state for a long period of time. The number of adult animals among the "rat kings" also confirms this theory.
Most researchers believe that these finds are artifacts created through the deliberate manipulation of people, for example, tying dead rats with their tails and mummifying them. Several reports of living rat kings remain unconfirmed. It is assumed that the reason for their formation is a lack of space, due to which young rats live too close and inevitably become entangled in their tails. However, this theory is opposed by the usual behavior of rats, which, as a rule, seek the most comfortable places. No scientific research has been carried out to prove the natural cause of this phenomenon, as a result of which most researchers consider the existence of "rat kings" a myth.
Historically, rat kings have been considered an extremely bad omen, particularly related to disease. This is a natural and reasonable conclusion, since large populations of rats in a small area usually bring disease and pestilence with them. With an increase in the rat population, the likelihood of an outbreak of disease - for example, black death, which was spread by rat fleas, increases.
The term "rat king" has often been misunderstood as "rat king." This idea was especially attractive for literary and artistic creativity: for example, in Hoffmann's fairy tale The Nutcracker, a villain acts - a seven-headed mouse king (in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet productions based on this tale, the mouse king rarely retains many heads). Another example is the fairy tale "Rattenkönig Birlibi" by Ernst Moritz Arndt.
Today, the rat king is sometimes used as a monster in horror films (for example, "The Rats" by James Herbert), but the phrase itself has a certain appeal and is, for example, the name of the debut novels of British writers James Clavell, "The Rat King (English)" (1962) and China Mieville, The Rat King (1998). A fantastic interpretation of the legend of the "rat king" and his alleged power over other rats and people can be found in Terry Pratchett's novel The Marvelous Maurice and His Rodent Scientists. One of the last references to the "rat king" comes from Lars von Trier's film Epidemic, where he was an omen of illness. The same concept is formed in the detective novel "The Rat King" by Michael Dibdin. Also, the rat king appears in Annie Prue's novel The Accordion of Crime.
In the TV version of the 1987 animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one of several unmutated returning villains was The Rat King, a filthy, ragged lunatic who could control rats - first with a flute (an allusion to the legend of the Hameln rat-catcher), and then simply by power of thought.
The rat king is also called the grotesque mutant from the "rat trilogy" by James Herbert.
In the cycle of fantastic stories by Leonid Kudryavtsev "The World-Chain", the Rat King is one of the heroes, possesses witchcraft abilities, thanks to which he easily travels between worlds, courage, honor and dignity. It is characterized rather positively.
In the Halo Jones comic book series by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, the "Rat King" was a weapon of war - a collective of five superintelligent rats with intertwined tails communicating via a computer terminal.
In Mercy Shelley's 2048 novel, the "Rat King" used AI like a human.
In the story of A. S. Green "The Pied Piper", the fictional book by Ert Ertrus "The Pantry of the Rat King" is mentioned, which describes the properties and characteristics of the behavior of a mythical creature (Green's rats are werewolves that can transform into humans).
In Abram Davidson's story, The Tail-Tied Kings, a group of fused rats, Father and Mother, rule the rat community while being completely helpless and completely dependent on other rats.
In rat flocks, there is no pronounced subordination of individuals. There are leaders here, both males and females, but their dominant position allows them only to take the best hiding places. Also, in conditions of high population density, when there are too many rats living on a unit of space, it is the individual leaders who, first of all, participate in reproduction. Animals on the lower levels of the hierarchy often do not participate in this celebration of life.
Thus, even in a very large and dense rat flock, a "rat king" cannot live, who would give some orders and who would be fed by other individuals. Even animal leaders, on an equal basis with the rest, participate in obtaining food and raising offspring, equally at risk of being caught and poisoned.
And one more thing: small local populations of rats can represent a large family, a group of descendants of one single female. Considering that the rat itself lives and reproduces up to 3-4 years, and each new brood of 8-15 rat pups appears every month and a half, and its own offspring begin to reproduce 7-8 months after birth, by the end of life such a mother -the heroine can be surrounded by hundreds of descendants of different generations.
This female does not have special privileges, but is usually one of the leaders of the population. If the reader wishes, she is the queen of the rats.
Also in mythology and in various folk tales there are references to people who controlled rats in one way or another. The most famous of these legends tells of the Pied Piper, who ordered the authorities of a German city to play the flute and carried all the rats into a pond and drowned them, and when the authorities refused to pay a fee, he did the same with a group of children.
It is noteworthy that this story is very widespread and seems to be based on some real historical events, since in many of its formulations in the literature specific dates are indicated. Most interpretations indicate that the rat-catcher introduced rats into hypnosis with his music, and children with unusual manners and bright clothes.
There are also historical reports of people who controlled rats in one way or another, or chased them out of cities in inexplicable ways. Many of these messages are typical legends or metaphors, but there are some that look more or less authentic among them.
Today, however, such human abilities have not been discovered and confirmed that would allow him to control the behavior of rats. Yes, animals can be frightened by sounds or smells, tame individuals can be trained, but a person is not able to force wild rats to perform certain actions anywhere. This means that messages about such people can be safely considered fairy tales or metaphors.
Signs and myths associated with rat kings
The finding of the rat king has always been considered a bad omen among the people. From the Middle Ages, the belief has come down to us that the rat king brings illness and death to the house of the person who discovered him.
In principle, such a sign has a rational grain: rats are companions of unsanitary conditions, carriers of many diseases. It was they who, in the Middle Ages, caused the plague pandemic, literally devastating some European countries and leading to the death of millions of people. The very fact that the rat king was found means that there are too many rats in a particular place, and that they live in very difficult conditions.
Likewise, ancient dream books view dreaming rats entwined with tails as an omen of a serious illness.
In ancient mythology, it was also believed that the rat king found on the ship foreshadows the sinking of the ship itself. It is noteworthy that there are no reports (even unconfirmed ones) about the finds of the "kings" on the ships.
So we draw the final conclusion: the rat king is, most likely, an accident, during which animals freeze and get entangled in their tails, cannot move and get food, and as a result die of hunger. Because of the rarity of such a phenomenon, it seems to a person to be something supernatural, and because of the disgust that many people have for rats, bad omens and beliefs are associated with it.