The Rat King is an inexplicable phenomenon of nature, over which modern science racks its brains. This topic was addressed by: Ert Ertrus, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman in his fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", James Herbert in his horror trilogy "Rats. Lair. Invasion." What is the Rat King?
It is a unique super-rat, consisting of several bodies intertwined in an unknown way or a rat with several heads (from 2 to 40 heads) on one body. Such a super-rat is carefully fed and guarded by all rats, in addition, it controls and dominates all rats.
Since the Rat King is an extremely rare rat phenomenon, it is still not clear whether it arises from the usual weaving of rat tails or whether it is the result of a mutation in the likeness of Siamese twins (this is not so rare in nature). This is how James Herberg describes the Rat King In the corner, surrounded by human bones, lay the most disgusting creature he had ever seen. In reality, in nightmares. In some ways it resembled those black, giant rats, but there were even more The elongated head, long fat body, thick tail - that was where the resemblance ended.
There was no hair on the creature's body, except for a few grayish patches. Dark veins showed through the white and grayish-pink skin … Harris looked into blind eyes without pupils, into yellow shimmering slits. The head of the creature sniffed from side to side. It seemed that this was the only way for her to detect the presence of a person. A terrible, almost poisonous stench emanated from the creature. A bump was protruding to the side of the big head. The bump was almost as big as the head itself, and it also swayed back and forth. Harris looked closer and saw on the bump … something that looked like a mouth! Lord! Yes, this creature has two heads! The second head had no eyes, but it had a mouth with fragments of teeth, there were no ears, but it had a long, sharp nose."
There are many fantastic stories about the rat king.
The Rat King in an old engraving.
According to one of them, in such a cluster all rats are dominated by a huge rat-king. Another tells that this huge sedentary mass of rats is the object of care of other relatives. Mentions of this phenomenon are found mainly in German sources.
In the 16th century, the German naturalist Konrad Gesner explained the phenomenon as follows: “… the old rat becomes very large, and the young relatives feed it. Such a rat is called the rat king. Only from the 18th century this name was assigned to a group of rats with intertwined tails. In the Middle Ages, the king of rats was considered an accomplice of the devil, endowed with tremendous power and witchcraft, the ability to induce pestilence, hunger and natural disasters.
It was also believed that the king was able to turn into a man and fulfill someone's wishes. But the meeting with the king of rats foreshadowed trouble: the Inquisition cruelly dealt with the owner of the house in which this creature was found. The townspeople looked askance at the person who found the rat lord, but they believed: if you bow to the many-headed monster, it will bring good luck and wealth. True, not everyone dared to bow to the strange creature. In the city chronicles of Darmstadt, it is said that people found a huge rat king, split into two smaller ones. When they tried to kill one of them, the rats simply gnawed each other's throats. The other king was thrown into the hearth, and the tongues of fire instantly turned an ominous green. And here is another written testimony: “1918. After the First World War, rats left the city.
The first in the procession carried away on their backs a large, many-headed creature - their king. Anomaly of nature! Information about the rat kings was summarized by the Dutch scientist Martin Hart. According to Hart, the first evidence of this phenomenon is contained in a poem by Johannes Sambukus, published in 1564, and only from 1564 to 1963. 57 rat kings have been found in the world. But these figures give a very rough idea of the frequency of the phenomenon, because not all cases have been described.
The last time the rat king was found was in January 2005 in Estonia. The owner of a farm located near the village of Saru, entering a barn, saw something unusual: a group of rats darted on the floor. They screeched in fright, but did not run away, as if something was holding them in place. The owner killed the rats with a stick. The animals lay for almost two months in the barn, and in March zoologists and journalists learned about the find, who transported a bunch of 13 rats to the University of Tartu and alcoholized them. Rat kings could be artificially created by people, because they were shown for money. But most likely, most of the rat kings appeared naturally: most of the rat kings were found alive, and the tails of living animals can be tied only in the laboratory. Some sources say that the kinsmen help their kings. In the article "Mystical anomaly of nature" N. Kontsedalova read: “For obvious reasons, the king is almost unable to move.
He doesn't need it. The subjects drag him on their backs. They feed him, give him drink, groom and cherish him. The strongest males and the most aggressive females bow down before him. The king's power in the pack is limitless, his appearance breaks the social organization of the rats, and the warring packs unite under his patronage. Doctor of Biological Sciences E. V. Kotenkova in the article “Mice and Rats - Heroes of Fantastic Stories and Legends” refutes this version: “A brood of four rats lived in a small double cage. In one part there is a nest, in the other there is a feeder and a drinking bowl.
There is a passage between them, into which only one animal can crawl. Since the cages were not cleaned for a long time, they did not notice that the food that was poured into the feeder remained almost intact, and the rats, when frightened, huddled in a corner, squeak, which usually does not happen with black rats. Then they discovered that one rat had died.
When they began to take her out, they saw that the other two were linked with her by their tails. It was not possible to separate them - the tails were so stuck together with each other and with the litter. The tails had to be amputated, but it was too late, as the animals soon died of exhaustion. The remaining free rat, the fourth of this brood, did not feed its fellows in trouble, and the animals themselves, linked by their tails, could not crawl to the feeder.