A squirrel king is a collection of squirrels whose tails have tangled together, making them unable to separate themselves.
[2] A squirrel king starts as a litter of young in the same nest, whose tails become knotted together by nesting materials and/or by tree sap gluing the tails together, particularly if the young squirrels have been gnawing bark of the tree that their nest is in, letting sap flow.
If the squirrels are not separated, they may fall to the ground still joined to each other when they try to come out of their nest, and will invariably die unless separated through human intervention.
[3][4] Unlike the rat king, the squirrel king is not found in medieval European literature.
[5] There have been incidents of animal cruelty or taxidermic artwork, where humans tied the tails of squirrels together, making something resembling the natural squirrel king.