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(#1) The Largest Rat King Is Really Gross
It's safe to assume that rat kings are incredibly gross to look at, and the largest rat king on display doesn't let viewers down. It's displayed in the Mauritianum Museum in Altenburg, Germany and it has 32 individual rats stuck together. There's obviously a lot of debate as to whether this rat king is real. And even if it was tied together post-mortem, it's still a monument to man's ability to not get super grossed out by touching a pile of dead rats. So next time you're in Germany, don't forget to go look at a nasty pile of rats!
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(#13) Rat Kings Are A Bad Omen
If you end up traveling back in time to the 16th century and see a rat king, run. Most ancient rat king sightings run parallel to swaths of deaths or famine, so it's no wonder that they were seen as a bad omen. Also, it's a pile of rats and no one's ever said, "Oh good, it's a pile of rats." It's most likely that all of those rats brought the plague along with them, cementing their status as bad omen numero uno.
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(#5) Rat Kings Aren't Conjoined Twins
One of the common misconceptions about rat kings is that they're actually made up of conjoined twins. This idea probably comes from the folkloric concept that rat kings share a hive mind, but as Boing Boing points out, rat kings only grow together after birth, not before. Although it's not out of the question for people from the Middle Ages to believe that rats formed together in the womb and hatched into surprise nightmares. That certainly adds to the spooky concept, but it's, unfortunately, another myth that falls apart the moment logic is applied.
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(#2) The Name Comes From A Myth
The very idea of the Rat King (or King Rat) comes from the myth that out of all the rats in a pile of rats, there's one wise rat who sits on the rest of the rats and rides on top like some kind of rodent Rick Ross. Nothing sounds more mythological than a rat that rides other rats, but it's also kind of silly. It's surprising that 16th-century villagers didn't laugh whoever came up with the idea out of Europe.
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(#21) There's A Squirrel King
Just when you thought that you'd never run afoul of a group of rodents stuck together, hungrily rampaging through the city, a squirrel king appeared in Regina, Saskatchewan, and had to be separated by a team of veterinarians. The squirrels were stuck together with pine sap, but luckily no one's tail had to be amputated.
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(#20) Rat Kings Have A Classy French Name
Everything sounds better in French, even a messy pile of disease-riddled rats! The "roi-de-rats" is a much better name for rat kings even if it sounds like a plumber who lives in East Orange, NJ named Roy DeRatz.
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About This Tool
The rat king is a phenomenon in which the tails of multiple mice are entwined. The cause of this phenomenon may be blood, dirt, feces, or simple knotting. When the tails are entwined, these mice will grow together. But the rat king phenomenon is rare in real life, and this phenomenon is often reminiscent of plagues or fatal epidemics. Most of the phenomena were found in German, and some rat kings are displayed in the museums of Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart.
So far, there has been no scientific explanation for the cause of the rat king phenomenon. You could know more information about this weird natural phenomenon in this random tool, there are 21 gross but fascinating facts about rat kings.
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