Rat King
As Rattenkönig plurality knotted or bonded to the tails rats , respectively. This rare phenomenon is said to occur mainly among house rats . Some sources state that the reason for this development is that the tails of a large number of animals become knotted and the animals then stick to their legs and flanks due to blood, dirt and excrement. As a result, the animals are said to grow together inseparably on their tails, which are often broken. However, this speculation is not supported by the evidence. Rats stuck together alive without knots and rats that have grown together are not documented. Almost all finds are only knotted at the tails. The only exception, the Rattenkönig von Altenburg (below), sticks together through mummification .
Possible causes
The cause of the agglomeration is said to be in excessively narrow burrows, in which young animals in particular are too close to each other and so the adhesion and mutual injury could take place. Many Rat Kings are said to have been found alive. This history of the origins of the Rat Kings is, among other things, in contradiction to the well-known pronounced comfort behavior of rats. There are no scientific studies that unequivocally prove the natural origin of the finds. The natural formation of the rat kings according to the above scheme is therefore often doubted, many relevant sources consider a natural occurrence to be unsecured or do not deal with the subject. Post-mortem adhesion or mummification and manipulation (e.g. tying the tails of killed rats) are also conceivable causes. According to English and French sources, the Rattenkönig is an old myth of the German-speaking area, partly also of the Dutch and Danish, which arose from accidental finds of rats knotted on their tails during play. Most of the finds there are viewed with skepticism as manipulation and mummification. Outside of Central Europe, France, the Baltic States and Denmark - apart from a find in Java - no rat kings were discussed or finds exhibited anywhere.
Finds
The earliest account of Rat Kings is from 1564, but the phenomenon subsided in the 18th century. The rarity of the finds since the beginning of the 20th century is attributed to the change in hygienic conditions, partly also to the displacement of the domestic rat by the more robust brown rat . The most recent finds date from April 10, 1986 (Maché in France) and January 16, 2005 from the Estonian district of Võru .
When they were discovered, Rat Kings were always quickly killed out of fear and superstition. Nevertheless, there were occasional finds of dead and subsequently mummified rat kings. The natural history museum " Mauritianum " in Altenburg (Thuringia) shows the largest known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in the chimney of a miller in Buchheim. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol preparations made by Rat Kings can be seen in museums in Hamburg, Göttingen and Stuttgart. Overall, the number of known finds of rat kings is low. Depending on the source, it varies between 35 and 50 finds.
The "rat king" is mainly described for the house rat ( Rattus rattus ). Only one find on March 23, 1918 in Bogor on Java was a rat king made up of ten young rice field rats ( Rattus argentiventer or Rattus rattus brevicaudatus ). However, similar phenomena are occasionally described in other species, for example a group of young wood mice ( Apodemus sylvaticus ) was discovered in Holstein in April 1929 . Reports that the Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg have a specimen from a squirrel king are wrong. A squirrel king was photographed in Nebraska in 2018. The Rat King is not to be confused with " Siamese " births that occur in many species (for example there are various preparations of "Cat Kings"). In the case of the Rat King, the animals should only grow together after birth, they are not incompletely separated multiple births.
According to the cryptozoologist Michael Schneider, a find made in 1963 by the farmer P. van Nijnatten in Rucphen (Holland) consisted of seven animals. X-rays show that there is callus formation at the breakpoints of the tails , which proves that these animals lived in this state for some time and were perhaps cared for by other rats. The presence of adult animals in the rat kings could also speak in favor of care by conspecifics.
reception
In historical times, the Rat King was considered an extremely bad omen and heralded the outbreak of a disease epidemic. Most of the time, such an event also happened, since rat kings often appear when there are too many rats and there is accordingly little space for new burrows. The risk of an outbreak of disease, such as the plague , whose pathogen ( Yersinia pestis ) is transmitted by rat fleas , increases with the number of rats .
In the early modern period, the rat king led to the false assumption that here a king or chief of a rat tribe was, so to speak, "enthroned" on his fellows. This image is obviously well suited as a subject for artistic and literary processing: In Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, a rat king plays a role as an opponent. In contrast, in the underlying story Nutcracker and Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann , a Mouse King plays the corresponding role of evil. This mouse king, however, does not consist of mice grown together, but has a body with seven heads. Another example is the fairy tale Rattenkönig Birlibi by Ernst Moritz Arndt . Here the Rat King is also represented as an individual, but at the same time Arndt emphasizes the intertwined tails of the Rat King couple.
In the 1840s there was also a literary association in Bonn, the so-called Maikäferbund , founded by Johanna and Gottfried Kinkel . The club magazine Der Maikäfer. The magazine for non-Philistines existed in a single copy. Members of the cockchafer association had 24 hours to write their contribution. Quote:
“In Nro 48 of October 28, 1845, he ( Karl Simrock ) took part in a 'Rattenkönig', a popular exercise among the cockchafer in which each member had to write a poem according to given final rhymes. That often led to rather strange results, as Simrock also remarked in his version: No matter how much I chatted foolish things here, / The foolishness has the advice, / That you occasionally do not hesitate to be too happy / Until completely disappeared beauty and - Shape. "
Today the Rat King is occasionally used as a monstrous figure in horror literature ( James Herbert - “The Rats”), but the word “Rat King” alone seems to have a certain attraction. In Avram Davidson's tale The Tail-Tied Kings from the same year, mighty, helpless creatures tied back by their tails, who are not explicitly referred to as rats, move in a nightmarish scene. Terry Pratchett explores the subject in his disc world novel Maurice, Der Kater 2001 (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents) .
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Maurice the Hangover, the protagonist Keith notes skeptically that the dirt that is supposed to be used to tie young rats together is not to be found in rat nests, and he suspects that rat kings are created by rat catchers themselves. This is supported in the novel by the rat king named Spider ( German : Spider ), consisting of eight rats , who, due to his traumatic creation, harbors a grudge against humanity. In a note from the author at the end of the novel, Pratchett ventures the theory that "over the centuries some cruel and inventive people have had too much time overall".
In 1993 the German sculptor Katharina Fritsch created an oversized sculpture of an oversized rat king consisting of 16 animals, which was exhibited at the 1999 Venice Biennale .
The French black metal band Mütiilation released the album Rattenkönig in 2004 , the cover of which shows a rat king with seven rats.
In the loot shooter Destiny 2 there is the exotic rat king pistol , which attracts attention with its sleigh decorated with rats .
Etymological note
Occasionally an etymology of the "rat king" from the French roi-de-rats , rat king, is cited, which may have originated from rouet de rats , rat wheel. But this seems unlikely, since the Rat King occurs mainly in Germany. The French name was therefore taken directly from the German one. Borrowing from German is also supported by the atypical binding constructions rat king or rat-king and roi de rats or roi-de-rats , which are atypical in the French and English languages , instead of king of rats or roi des rats , which imitate the German word binding. The Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Russian and Turkish names of the phenomenon are literal translations of the German expression "Rattenkönig", thus probably borrowings that refer to the beginnings of the myth of a king in the rat kingdom (16th to 18th centuries), when rat kings were almost only documented in the German-speaking area.
Known finds and exhibition copies (incomplete)
Finds
- 1725 from Müller Berger in Dorndorf / Werra , 11 living individuals in the attic, hunted with assistants and drowned in the Mühlgraben, some of them had previously broken free.
- 1748 by the miller Johann Heinrich Jäger in his mill: 18 living individuals.
- 1772 in Erfurt , Schlössergasse, when a granary building was demolished - 11 individuals, an Erfurt doctor tried to preserve the specimen, which he failed.
- December 1822 in Döllstedt, two rat kings: one out of 14 and one out of 28 individuals.
- 1828 in Buchheim near Eisenberg (Thuringia): When a chimney was torn down, a miller found a group of 32 dead, dried out and furless individuals, which are exhibited today in the “Mauritianum” in Altenburg .
- 1895: 10 individuals, on display today in the Zoological Museum of the City of Strasbourg .
- 1899: 7 individuals, today on display in the museum in Châteaudun .
- March 23, 1918 in Bogor on Java : 10 individuals of rice field rats.
- February 1963, by the Dutch farmer P. van Nijnatten in Rucphen : 7 individuals.
- April 10, 1986, in Maché in France: 9 individuals, on display today in the museum in Nantes .
- January 16, 2005, in Võrumaa in Estonia: 16 individuals, five to nine of them living.
- September 17, 2018, in Wisconsin , USA , five young gray squirrels , tails knotted together and with blades of grass and plastic strips, animals could be separated alive.
preparations
- Mauritianum , Altenburg: 32 mummified individuals, found in 1828
- Hamburg, Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg (alcohol preparation)
- Göttingen, Zoological Museum of the University of Göttingen (alcohol preparation and X-ray)
- Museum of Nantes : 9 individuals, found in 1986
- Strasbourg Museum : 10 individuals, found in 1895
- Châteaudun Museum : 7 individuals, found in 1899
Occurrence in other animal species
In addition to the rat kings, there have been isolated reports of similar phenomena in animals of other species of animal connected to one another by the tails. From 1683, a single-sheet print reports not only the discovery of a rat king but also one from cats ; the author of the report sees the apparition as a reminder from God to the sinful people.
There have been numerous observations and finds of squirrel kings from North America . Many of them with living individuals, some of which could be successfully separated from one another.
literature
- Kurt Becker, Heinrich Kemper: The rat king. A monographic study . In: Journal of Applied Zoology: Supplements . No. 2 . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964.
- Rottekonger . In: Facts & Faenomener . No. 3 . Bonniers Specialmagasiner, 1995, ISSN 0909-9891 (Danish).
- Kathrin Passig, Aleks Scholz: The Rat King . In: Lexicon of ignorance. To which there is no answer so far . 3. Edition. Rowohlt, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-87134-569-2 , pp. 156-160 .
Web links
- The Altenburg rat king . In: Website of the Natural History Museum Mauritianum Altenburg
- Rat knot in the museum of Nantes with X-ray image (French)
- Rat knot of Rucphen with callus formation (arrows) in the X-ray image (Dutch)
- Publication of the Vörumaa rat knot and other finds in Estonia . In: Website of the Natural History Museum of the University of Tartu (English; PDF; 201 kB)
- Example of five live croissants knotted together on YouTube
Individual evidence
- ^ Andrei Miljutin: Rat kings in Estonia . In: Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences . No. 56.1 , 2007, ISSN 1406-0914 , p. 77–81 (English, kirj.ee [PDF; 200 kB ; accessed on February 3, 2013]).
- ↑ Kim von Ciriacy: Phenomenon "The Rat King": Why these 6 squirrels are knotted on the tails. In: welt.de . May 19, 2018, accessed February 10, 2019 .
- ↑ De rattenkoning van Rucphen. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 1, 2007 ; Retrieved on February 3, 2013 (Dutch, Der Rattenkönig von Rucphen. Callus formation in the X-ray image is marked with arrows). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ ETA Hoffmann : Nutcracker and Mouse King in the Gutenberg-DE project
- ↑ Ernst Moritz Arndt : Rattenkönig Birlibi in the Gutenberg-DE project
- ↑ Ulrike Brandt-Schwarze: Mostly cheerful ... Karl Simrock in the Maikäferbund . In: Karl Simrock Research (Ed.): Karl Simrock 1802–1876. Insights into life and work . Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-00-009052-5 .
- ↑ Dirk Neubauer: The irony of Katharina Fritsch. In: nrz.de. March 16, 2014, accessed May 25, 2020 .
- ↑ Mütiilation - The Rat King. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
- ↑ Daniela Schlögel: Destiny 2: Get the Rat King - that's how it works. In: chip.de. September 10, 2018, accessed May 25, 2020 .
- ^ From the Dorndorfer Rat King . In: Eisenacher Zeitung, supplement “Luginsland” . June 18, 1931.
- ↑ Bellermann: The long doubted, and finally confirmed the Rat-King . In: Christian August Vulpius (Ed.): Curiosities of the physical-literary-artistic-historical past and present . tape VIII , no. VI . Weimar 1820, p. 537-545 ( uni-jena.de ).
- ↑ Animal Rescue in Wisconsin: The Gordian Squirrel Knot . In: Spiegel Online , September 17, 2018, accessed on September 17, 2018.
- ↑ Another miracle = worthy and horrific // monster /// As previously the Ratzen so also now the cats ... Felsecker, Nürnberg 1683, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 29-einblatt-0262-3 (single-sheet print. University Library Erlangen-Nürnberg , Signature: A IV 88.).
- ^ Tangled Squirrels Rescued By Regina Animal Clinic. In: huffingtonpost.ca. June 13, 2013, accessed May 25, 2020 .
