Rat Kings: Superstitions and Peculiarities
Rats. Maligned and feared by many. With scaly tails and sharp claws, they are about as welcome as frostbite. Known carriers of disease, they are often found residing within the sewer systems of every country in the world. If found in your home, they are a dangerous nuisance, chewing through cables, floors and even walls! For this reason, they have become harbingers of bad luck.
But, beyond the obvious, what else is known about them?
Rats and humans have lived alongside each other for centuries. An opportunist species, they have learnt to take advantage of human society and the waste we’re guilty of producing. This close proximity has resulted in various superstitions gaining traction over the years. One such peculiarity is something known as a Rat King.
Now, this may sound like a very important rodent sat aloft on a fancy throne while his subjects do his bidding. In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth. A rat king is a term used to describe a cluster or rats whose tails have tangled together. The rats, usually juveniles of the black rat, are found in a wheel formation knotted at the central point by their tails. The first known case was discovered in 1564, while the first mummified example of such a formation is found in the Mauritianum museum in Germany. This was apparently discovered in a miller’s fireplace dating back to 1828 and consists of a whopping 32 rats! The Otago Museum in New Zealand proudly houses a rat king of their own which was found in 1930. Horse hair was the main cause of their final predicament in this situation.
Source: Edelseider, Strasbourg, Germany
More recently.
A very recent case was discovered in 2021 in a flooded watermelon field in Russia. The farmer came upon the troubled immature rats where their tails were tied to the stalk of a plant. After freeing them, he set about untangling their tails. The farmer believed it was the mother of the rats who had secured their tails to ensure they would not wash away into the water during the flood.
How?
No one can really pinpoint the reason for this with most claiming it as a hoax. One suggestion is that the tails of the back rats are more likely to knot together due to their increased flexibility. Black rats prefer to nest above ground in trees and buildings, rather than underground in burrows. This results in their tails being far more prehensile than their brown relations. A mixture of sebum (a skin secretion), food particles, sap, and waste excretions create a bonding agent that, when the rats are nesting in close proximity, could potentially glue their tails together. Black rats have a tendency to cluster together during colder months making this theory more plausible. Emma Burns who is the curator of the Otago Museum stated that some rat tails have a natural clasping reflex which could cause them to become knotted.
Other Superstitions
As already mentioned, rats were viewed as having the ability to foretell disaster. One such incident occurred in 1889 where three people, employed on the Paris C. Brown river boat, witnessed three rats leave the boat. Taking this as a warning, they refused to return to the ship. As the ship left, not too long after the hull hit against an obstruction resulting in the ship sinking. Eleven people were reported dead. It is likely this is merely coincidence and if the ship had not experienced disaster, those three employees would have given it no more thought.
This same belief transfers to buildings as well where any rats abandoning a house for no reason was seen as a bad omen. This so-called bad omen could indicate misfortune about to befall the household or the structure was unsafe and soon to collapse.
On the other hand, rats seen entering a house is seen as good fortune where the occupants will come into wealth.
But if you didn't want the rats there, then what did people do if they either didn't have a rat trap or perhaps didn't want to initiate an all out war with their furry freeloaders? One superstition states that you simply ask them to leave. Believe it or not, the advice was to write a polite note on a piece of paper, pass it into the entrance of their access point asking them to vacate your property. Apparently, this practice dates back as far as the first century. One such note from 1869 reads:
Rats and mice,
Leave this poor person’s house,
Go on your way over to the mill,
And there you’ll get all your fill.
There’s no hard evidence to show this actually worked and I’m sure the local mill owner wouldn't have been overly thrilled at seeing hordes of homeless mice and rats taking up residence in his workplace. Flour beetles would have been the least of his problems.
Final thoughts…
Ultimately, many of these old beliefs are nothing more than superstitions. Rats can’t foretell doom and disaster anymore than humans or other creatures. And despite a rather comedic image of a rat sitting at a little table catching up with his correspondence and coming across the ‘polite note’ - they can’t read. Those precious notes no doubt ended up as nesting material for the rats instead.
The rat king phenomena is probably the only oddity that holds some truth. Even though preserved examples can be hoaxed-easily enough with examples like the Fiji Mermaid and the Jackalope-more modern examples with actual footage is harder to explain away. It is plausible that the tails of nesting youngsters can become tangled up.
Whatever the real reason for the curious phenomena and superstitions, rats still divide people with some finding them utterly repellent, while others are less bothered and have a more live and let live approach.
Sources:
Wikipedia.com, (Nov 2021), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king (accessed Nov 2021)
Olivia Burke, (Aug 2021), https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16015545/rats-tied-together-rare-rat-king-phenomenon-plague-famine/ (accessed Nov 2021)
Snopes.com,(Sept 2009), https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rat-superstitions/ (accessed Nov 2021)