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February 29, 2020 12:10 PM

An (Almost) Comprehensive History of Rat Kings [Mental Floss] “Behold the rat king! A ball of furry fury, a rat king occurs when the tails of rodents become twisted, wrapped, and warped into a knot so impossible that not even the world's most loyal Boy Scout could untangle it. Rat kings have been reported since the mid-16th century (almost entirely within Germany), and everything about them—from their name, to their cause, to their very existence—remains suspended in mystery. [...] The rat king's existence is debatable; while there are several preserved specimens, they might be fakes perpetrated by hoaxers who wanted to make a quick buck. Owing to a lack of solid contemporary evidence, zoologists remain skeptical of rat kings—but open to the possibility that they are freak accidents.”

• The Complicated, Inconclusive Truth Behind Rat Kings [Atlas Obscura]

“Rat experts, meanwhile, are a bit more skeptical, though they concede that a naturally occurring rat king is at least … possible. “When it is very cold rats may use one another for heat, bringing those long tails into direct contact, wrapping around one another,” says Michael Parsons, a scholar-in-residence at Hofstra University who developed a remote sensing technique to better understand rat behavior in urban environments. “Rat kings might be more common than thought—they just don’t persist very long as the tails would unwind as temperatures rose, or (gasp!) when one rat gnaws off its own, or another rat’s, tail.” Others have different theories. “Rat kings may just be a myth that a few people have perpetuated with fake examples,” says Matthew Combs, a doctoral student focusing on rats at Fordham University, even if the motivations of the modern rat king fabricator are less than clear, and the fabrication itself not necessarily easy.”

• The Rat King: So Much Worse Than it Sounds [Slate]

“What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “rat king”? Perhaps a sniffy-nosed rodent scampering about in a crown? Or maybe a ballet dancer in a rat costume, a la the Mouse King in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker? Well, take those innocent visions, dash them, and report to Room 101. There, in your bespoke face-cage, you will meet the real rat king. A rat king, or roi-de-rats if you want to get all classy and French about it, is a pack of rodents whose tails have become entwined. The adhesive for this rat tangle may be dirt, blood, or feces, or the tails may simply be knotted together. The number of rats in a rat king varies wildly — two rats can make a rat king, albeit a pretty pathetic one.”

posted by Fizz (38 comments total)

Wow, this is a nightmare I didn't know existed...

Cool.

Or apparently, (frosty)
posted by Windopaene at 12:19 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ironically, I just forgot about Trump for a second.
posted by leafmealone at 12:20 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

And in the only horror novel Pratchett ever wrote the rat kingis one of the scaries. I think the footnotesof that one are the best of any Pratchett novel ever
posted by uandt at 12:48 PM on February 29, 2020 [9 favorites]

I also thought of that Pratchett book! It's interesting that you call it his only horror novel when it was also his first young-adult novel.
posted by bright flowers at 12:50 PM on February 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

Now I have this to worry about?!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:04 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

The rat king was one of my favorite monsters in Hilda.
posted by brook horse at 1:05 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

All the compulsion, paranoia and dread induced by the rat king, the incredibly high body count, none of the main characters (except for the stupid human boy) are are really that young... I'm fine with it being labelled as YA and I love it for all the great rat family interaction parts and it's one of my favorite Pratchett books. I label it as brothers Grimm style short thingy. The rat king was scary
posted by uandt at 1:09 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am certainly prepared to believe this is made-up, but why?
posted by thelonius at 1:12 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

The best part about this is how the author keeps coming up with new and more elaborate ways to describe rat kings. My favourite (and future band name) is the evocative "motley knot of eight rats".
posted by slimepuppy at 1:21 PM on February 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

RatKing is the title of the 1988 novel by Michael Dibdin.

The phrase is used to describe the complex web of corrupt entanglements and obligations that exists (in the novel's case) in the upper echelons of Italian politics - "Something that happens when too many rats have to live in too small a space under too much pressure."

I don't know if it briefly caught on, but it does seem an apt phrase for the current US political administration.
posted by vacapinta at 1:25 PM on February 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

→ everything about them … remains suspended in mystery.

I'd put it down to dodgy alcohol, limited education and the surprising lack of available cell-phone cameras myself.
posted by scruss at 1:30 PM on February 29, 2020

Rat Kings are a myth. Leap Day William is real.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 1:36 PM on February 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

Alternatively, there's King Rat.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:44 PM on February 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

Alternatively, there's King Rat by China Miéville.
posted by happyinmotion at 1:49 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

The case for leaving city rats alone (recap: killing one or two causes a rat family to migrate to a new area, but leaving them alone would prevent imported diseases from spreading)
posted by Brian B. at 1:51 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Squirrel Kings do seem to happen in nature, but then they have fluffy tails.
posted by tavella at 1:53 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Rat Kings in Diablo III. There's a big boss version amusingly named Hamelin.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:22 PM on February 29, 2020

only horror novel Pratchett ever wrote

I remember thinking The Amazing Maurice was a parable about Nazism, when I read it, but I could be wrong.
posted by Grangousier at 2:42 PM on February 29, 2020

CAT5 kings
posted by cenoxo at 3:21 PM on February 29, 2020 [7 favorites]

Jessamyn brought this up once, and it still makes me shudder to think about. (Though, of course, I don’t really see it in my mind’s eye — totally thankful I don’t suffer from photorealistic imaginings.)
posted by klausman at 3:53 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “rat king”?

Alan Moore's rat king in The Ballad of Halo Jones.
posted by biffa at 4:10 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

CAT5 kings
posted by cenoxo at 6:21 PM on February 29 [2 favorites +] [!]

Link that doesn't involve google:
https://imgur.com/gallery/cgX4P
posted by mcrandello at 4:28 PM on February 29, 2020

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “rat king”?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
posted by oulipian at 4:29 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I always thought the Rat King in the Nutcracker was alluding to this.
posted by Max Power at 5:01 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

And the novel by James Clavell.
posted by panhopticon at 5:03 PM on February 29, 2020

If I only had one wish, I'd probably waste it on eliminating rodents.

Or cockroaches.
posted by Beholder at 5:18 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I presumed the legend was merely a myth, but the Otago sighting of rat tails conjoined with horsehair makes me think it's possible. Rats build nests from available material, including threadlike stuff. If two tails get caught in a loop of this stuff while they're in the nest it's plausible that they're going to crawl in and around and over each other trying to get free. If the tails make a loop and a rat crawls through the loop it will make an overhand knot (basic knot, simple knot, Stafford knot etc.) which will potentially catch other tails when it draws tight. Hence: rat king.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:18 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yes the supposed rat-king in the local museum is a real thing, whether it's a natural or a made thing is anyone's guess
posted by mbo at 7:30 PM on February 29, 2020

I'm hard to gross out, like really pretty hard to gross out, but rat kings...........get me. I'm totally prepared to accept they're a fake thing but that doesn't bleach the images out of my brain.

or the sounds
posted by jameaterblues at 8:35 PM on February 29, 2020

If I only had one wish, I'd probably waste it on eliminating rodents.

Or cockroaches.

What we need to do, see, is get the rodents and the cockroaches to declare war on each other. Job done.
posted by Grangousier at 2:07 AM on March 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

I had always read or been told that the term "rat king" just referred to the very real phenomenon of rats clambering over one another in a ball to preserve heat in cold weather, but also to the myth that their tails could get tied in a knot after doing this. I had no idea anyone tried to put "specimens" in a museum!

I tend to use the metaphor a lot, to refer primarily to when there is insufficient bike parking somewhere on a group ride. "Let's just make a rat king and chain all our bikes together." etc. Or I use it to refer to something that is just an accumulation of undesirable parts in the shape of something actually desirable. "Yeah the site seems to work, but it's just a giant rat king of shell scripts and PHP pages that won't survive a week."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:30 AM on March 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Definitely up there in my personal favorite baroque creepy crawlies, probably because of the Pratchett book.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:02 AM on March 1, 2020

I noticed that the standard etymology of "rat king" is assumed to actually be the word "king" rather than the very similar sounding word, kink.
posted by Brian B. at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2020

ngl idk what the actual plural is, but surely we can all agree it should be "rats king".
posted by glonous keming at 11:25 AM on March 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

How about rat skiing?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:48 AM on March 1, 2020

I once belonged to a fitness team called "The Rat Kings".
posted by acrasis at 4:54 PM on March 1, 2020

Obligatory China Mieville citation
posted by mollymillions at 10:58 PM on March 1, 2020

It’s important not to confuse the rat king with the rat pope. The rat king is a writhing, nightmarish ball of panicked vermin, whereas the rat pope is the leader of the church, the head of the Ratican city state and - following the Concordat of Worms - the only divinely appointed authority with the power of investiture of bishops throughout the Holy Rodent Empire.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 6:08 AM on March 2, 2020 [4 favorites]