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A rat king is prominent in [[James Tiptree, Jr.]]'s novelette ''The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats'', originally published in ''New Dimensions 6'', 1976. |
A rat king is prominent in [[James Tiptree, Jr.]]'s novelette ''The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats'', originally published in ''New Dimensions 6'', 1976. |
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On the television show [[30 Rock]], the character of Dennis makes a reference to a rat king in the episode ''[[Jack Meets Dennis]]'' |
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==References== |
==References== |
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Revision as of 23:22, 5 November 2009
Rat kings are phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, ice, excrement or simply knotted. The animals reputedly grow together while joined at the tails. The numbers of rats that are joined together can vary, but naturally rat kings formed from a larger number of rats are rarer. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported. Historically, rat kings were seen as an extremely bad omen, particularly associated with plagues.[citation needed]
Some authors[who?] presume the creatures are legendary and all the supposed physical evidence (such as mummified groups of dead rats with their tails tied together) are hoaxes[citation needed]. Reports of living specimens remain unsubstantiated. No known scientific study has been performed on this topic yet.
Displays
Specimens of purported rat kings are kept in some museums. The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg (Thuringia) shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol-preserved rat kings are shown in museums in Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart. A rat king found in 1930 in New Zealand, displayed in the Otago Museum in Dunedin, was composed of immature Rattus rattus whose tails were entangled by horse hair.[1] Relatively few rat kings have been discovered; depending on the source, the number of reported instances varies between 35 and 50 finds.
The earliest report of rat kings comes from 1564[citation needed]. If real, the phenomenon may have diminished when the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) displaced the black rat (R. rattus) in the 18th century. Sightings have been sporadic in the modern era; most recently comes an Estonian farmer's discovery in the Võrumaa region[2] on January 16, 2005.
Most extant examples are formed from black rats (R. rattus). The only find involving sawah rats (Rattus rattus brevicaudatus) occurred on March 23, 1918, in Bogor on Java, where a rat king of ten young field rats was found. Similar attachments have been reported in other species: in April 1929, a group of young forest mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) was reported in Holstein; and there have been reports of squirrel kings. The Tartu Ülikooli Zooloogiamuuseum (Museum of Zoology in Tartu, Estonia) has a specimen. The Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg allegedly owns a specimen.[citation needed]
The rat king discovered in 1963 by the farmer P. van Nijnatten at Rucphen (Netherlands) as published by cryptozoologist M. Schneider consists of seven rats. X-ray images[3] show formations of callus at the fractures of their tails which according to proponents show that the animals survived happily for an extended period of time with the tails tangled. [3]
In popular culture
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The rat king appears in novels such as China Miéville's King Rat, The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot, Ratking by Michael Dibdin, Peeps by Scott Westerfeld, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding, Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle and The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents as well as being mentioned in Jingo by Terry Pratchett. A rat king portentously appears in a sub-section of the same name in E. Annie Proulx's fictional work Accordion Crimes. Rat kings inspired the title character in The Wyrm King, the finale of Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi's Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles series.
In Alan Moore's and Ian Gibson's comic book series Halo Jones, the Rat King was a weapon of war, a super-intelligent collective of five rats with entwined tails who were able to communicate via a computer terminal.
A rat king is prominent in James Tiptree, Jr.'s novelette The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats, originally published in New Dimensions 6, 1976.
On the television show 30 Rock, the character of Dennis makes a reference to a rat king in the episode Jack Meets Dennis
References
- ^ "Rat King". Galleries > Animal Attic. Otago museum. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
The Otago Museum's rat king: This display features a family of Rattus rattus, discovered in the 1930s. They had fallen from their nest in the rafters of a shipping company shed, and were immediately followed to the floor by a parent who vigorously defended the young.
- ^ Miljutin A (2007). "Rat kings in Estonia" (PDF). Proc. Estonian Acad. Sci. Biol. Ecol. 56 (1): 77–81.
- ^ a b Rucphen, Rat king (2007-01-21). "Rat king Rucphen". Rucphen. Retrieved 2007-01-21.