Rat king

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Rat king

The Rat King is also a fictional character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.

Rat kings are mythological beasts said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at the tails, and additionally stuck to each other with blood, dirt, and excrements. Consequently, the animals grow together, joined at the tails, which are often broken. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported.

Most researchers presume that the creatures are legendary and are created by conscious manipulation of human beings, such as tying the tails of dead rats together and mummifying them. Some reports of living specimens have been made, but remain unsubstantiated. The supposed cause for the phenomenon is the narrow living space in some buildings, where the young animals live too close together, becoming hopelessly entangled with one another. However, the normal behavior of rats, which generally seek their own comfort, speak against this theory. No scientific study has been performed to prove a natural cause of the phenomenon, so that most researchers class the rat king as a fictitious animal.

[edit] 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 the fire-place of a miller in Buchheim. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol-preserved rat kings may be viewed in museums in Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart. Altogether, the number of well-known finds of rat kings is small. Depending upon source, it varies between 35 and 50 finds.

The earliest report of rat kings comes from 1564. With the displacement of the black rat by the brown rat in the 18th century, the phenomenon has died down. For instance, since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been fewer sightings of rat kings, the most recent find dating from April 10, 1986, coming from a French discovery in the Vendée, and from January 16, 2005, coming from an Estonian discovery in Võrumaa.

Rat king in the scientific museum Mauritianum Altenburg, Germany

Most known "rat king" examples are formed from black rats (Rattus 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 gluings 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, of which the Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg allegedly owns a specimen. Rat kings are not to be confused with conjoined twins, which arise in several species. With the rat king, the animals are said to grow together only after birth and are completely separate during birth.

The "rat king" which was 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 show formations of callus at the fractures of their tails which proves that these animals must have survived an extended period of time under those circumstances and also been fed by fellow rats. The number of adult animals among rat kings supports this theory, too.

[edit] Reception

Historically, rat kings were seen as an extremely bad omen, particularly associated with plagues. This is a reasonable conclusion if they are formed naturally, since large populations of rats housed in insufficient space generally bring with them disease and pestilence. With an increase in the size of the rat population comes an increase of the chance of outbreak of disease — for example, the Black Death, which is spread by the rats’ fleas.

The term rat king has often led to the misconception of a king of rats. This idea has been particularly appealing to the literary and artistic mind set: The Nutcracker, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is set to a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann, which features a mouse king as the villain. Another example is the fairy tale Rattenkönig Birlibi, by Ernst Moritz Arndt.

Today, the rat king is occasionally used as a monster in horror novels (e.g., James Herbert’s The Rats), but the word rat king alone seems to have a certain attraction; hence, for example, the debut novels of British writers James Clavell and China Miéville, both titled King Rat. A fictional treatment of the rat-king legend and the supposed power over other rats (and humans) can be found in Terry Pratchett's novel The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. A rat king in which the entwined rats share a hive mind is a significant character in Alan Moore's The Ballad of Halo Jones. One recent reference to the rat king can be found in Lars von Trier's film Epidemic, with the rat king as an omen for the upcoming disease. The concept also forms a theme in Michael Dibdin's detective novel Ratking. A rat king also appears in Annie Proulx's novel Accordion Crimes.

In the 1987 television cartoon version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one of the few non-mutant recurring villains whom the Turtles faced was the Rat King, a filthy lunatic dressed in rags, with the ability to control rats — originally by means of flute music, and later simply by the power of his mind.

Rat king was also a name dubbed to a grotesque mutant featured in the 'Rats Trilogy' by James Herbert.