Rat king

The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg, Thuringia, shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim.

[3] Alcohol-preserved rat kings are shown in museums in Hamburg, Göttingen, Hamelin, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Tartu and Nantes.

One 2005 sighting comes from an Estonian farmer in Saru, of the Võrumaa region;[7] many of the rats in the specimen, now part of the collection at the University of Tartu Museum of Zoology in Estonia, were alive.

A possible explanation is that the long flexible tail of the black rat could be exposed to sticky or frozen substances such as sebum (a secretion from the skin itself), sap, food, or excretory products.

This mixture acts as a bonding agent and may solidify as rats sleep especially when the animals live in proximity during winter.

"[2] Some zoologists remain skeptical, saying that, while theoretically possible, the rats would not be able to survive in such a condition for a long time,[2][5][18] particularly if the temperatures rose or if they bit their own or another's tail to try to free themselves.

However, experts support the idea of isolated freak accidents due to the existence of occasional well-observed cases involving squirrels—also members of the rodent family.

[5] A 2007 study published in Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Science, Biology, and Ecology, following the finding of the University of Tartu specimen, concluded that the phenomenon is possible but rare.

The Lorrie Moore short story Wings features a couple who discover a rat king in their attic.

In an author's note at the end of the novel, Pratchett ventures the theory that "down the ages, some cruel and inventive people have had altogether too much time on their hands".

The film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, based on the short story, similarly features a "Mouse King", a rat-king like creature formed from a teeming mass of small mice.

When asked about it, vocalist Henry Cox explained that he used the rat king as a metaphor for contemporary political and social events.

[21][22] Co-director Kurt Margenau described the idea behind the Rat King as the team's take on "what happens to them [the infected] when they sit around for a really long time.

A three-head rat sovereign appears as the primary antagonist in Mac Barnett's, graphic novel, The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza.