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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tuchas Julian

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Speaker 1: know the Over the weekend, I received a call friend

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Speaker 1: of mine told me, Hey, um, I have a favor.

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Speaker 1: I've got this. Uh, this family member and his family

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Speaker 1: meat out of their house this weekend because of rats. Oh.

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Speaker 1: I thought, you're gonna say, witness relocation program. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: this was in it'll well similar in some ways, but no,

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Speaker 1: this was this is a situation where they were in

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Speaker 1: the house and then they realized that there was a

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Speaker 1: serious rat problem, like like bad rat problem enough to

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Speaker 1: flee because there's so many. I mean, rats are are gross,

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Speaker 1: rats are disease carriers there, you know. And then we

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Speaker 1: have all these additional images of them, say, crawling into

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Speaker 1: cradles and eating babies at night and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: or or firing up the oven and attempting to cook

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Speaker 1: things and causing house fires. These are common fears. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: are last howing you with their long long tails and uh.

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Speaker 1: In the midst of this that there was talk of like, oh,

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Speaker 1: the city's gonna come and demolish the house, like it's

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Speaker 1: that bad and the house is gonna be destroyed and

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Speaker 1: possibly burned, which a control burned, which sounded crazy to

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Speaker 1: me because it seems like if you burn a house

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Speaker 1: full of rats, you're just gonna send flaming rats out

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Speaker 1: into the surrounding neighborhoods. Now, I have to ask were

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Speaker 1: they keeping like cuts of meat in the basement or

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Speaker 1: just hanging on hooks? Yeah, I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if there was like a cave underneath the house that

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Speaker 1: went to some secret rat underworld. But I had in

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Speaker 1: my mind the image of, like we were deprived the floorboards,

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Speaker 1: would we would we see there in the in the

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Speaker 1: darkness this uh, this this site like right out of

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Speaker 1: a German woodcut from the Middle Ages. Would we see

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Speaker 1: a rat king hole with all its little rats tangled

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Speaker 1: up in its tail? Yeah? A cluster kind of like

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Speaker 1: a what are those cookies where like clusters Google clusters?

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Speaker 1: You have like a Google cluster of rats. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: that's disgusting. Yeah, it is disgusting. It's it's use. Somewhere

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Speaker 1: there exists a Google cluster of rats that's an edible

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Speaker 1: like street food. I mean, rats maybe good eating. That's

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Speaker 1: that's a that's a whole another issue entirely and h

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Speaker 1: and who knows ratkings maybe good eating. But but the

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Speaker 1: idea of the rat king I find so fascinating and

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Speaker 1: most people do because A it's grotesque, it's just purely grotesque.

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Speaker 1: And B it's uh, it's kind of a fictional, fantastic

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Speaker 1: exaggeration of humanities. Um long history with the rat because

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Speaker 1: as we've spread across the globe under nearly every continent,

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Speaker 1: I mean, well we've spread to every continent of obviously

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Speaker 1: at least one of those continents, is is more of

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Speaker 1: a just a foothold than anything. But the rats have

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Speaker 1: always come with us. They've come with us on our ships,

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Speaker 1: we've built cities, and they've moved in next to us.

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Speaker 1: They you know, anywhere we go, we're taking them with us.

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Speaker 1: And we're always waging wars with the rat to keep

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Speaker 1: it from invading our space and uh, living up the

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Speaker 1: fat of our land. Yeah. Yeah, And in fact, before

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Speaker 1: we actually get to rat kings and how horrific they are,

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Speaker 1: or maybe aren't get to that, um to your point

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Speaker 1: about infestation and how we've tried to keep them at

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Speaker 1: bay in seventeen eighty, a Japanese boat infested with sewer

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Speaker 1: rats shipwrecked off the Alaskan coast, and rats killed off

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Speaker 1: masses of residents, seabirds, and the island became known as

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Speaker 1: rat Island. Um. In two thousand and eight, could think

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Speaker 1: about them festering for for this song, right, the US

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Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service code in the island with poisoned

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Speaker 1: grain because they were trying to get rid of them.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not quite sure what the issue was. There.

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Speaker 1: Were they like paddling over in their boats to Alaska

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Speaker 1: and um, you know, scaring the townsfolk. But unfortunately when

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Speaker 1: they did that, they took down not only the rat,

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Speaker 1: but they also harmed all the other wildlife species. I mean,

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Speaker 1: obviously that's a good example of why rats haven't been

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Speaker 1: eradicated completely, right, because it's very hard to ferret them

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Speaker 1: out without ruining the entire environment. Yeah, they can eat

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Speaker 1: just about anything. They breed incredibly fast. Oh yeah, and

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Speaker 1: do you know why, because they don't care. They will

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Speaker 1: breed a mother in the in the newborn, will breed

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Speaker 1: a father and a sister, a brother and a sister.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of incest city when it comes

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Speaker 1: to rats, so and as humans we can't help but

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Speaker 1: be disgusted by that aspect of a ratdom as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that gives them many more breeding opportunities, and they

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Speaker 1: can live just about anywhere, I mean, aside from the

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Speaker 1: whole nearly every continent. They can live in cold climates,

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Speaker 1: they can live in hot climates. They can live in

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Speaker 1: your basement, they can live in your attic, they can

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Speaker 1: they can live in the most disgusting of circumstances, and

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Speaker 1: they're totally cool with it. They're like, Hey, I know

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Speaker 1: it's it's horrible in here, but we're gonna all breed

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Speaker 1: with each other anyway and eat everything we can well,

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Speaker 1: and not only just eat everything we can, but sometimes

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Speaker 1: mothers will eat their young as well, So there's infants

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Speaker 1: aside there, right, But as we've discussed our previous podcast,

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Speaker 1: we can't judge that too harsh way on a purely

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Speaker 1: economy of energy level, it just makes sense, well, and

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Speaker 1: it's not like the mother rats just sitting around going

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Speaker 1: nomenom nom, give me young. It's usually a case where

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Speaker 1: there's there's some sort of situation that is extraordinary and

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Speaker 1: that you know, some sort of food source is not available,

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Speaker 1: so she looks to her young. It's kind of like

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Speaker 1: the the rat equivalent of I'm not going to drink

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Speaker 1: all this water. I'm going to pour it out on

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Speaker 1: the plant kind of a thing. You know. It's just

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's sensible. A decision is that. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course the rat has a huge stigma for being

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Speaker 1: a plague carrier, the idea that these things are not

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Speaker 1: only living amongst us, but they are carrying diseases that

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Speaker 1: could wipe out whole cities. The rat becomes this dire

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Speaker 1: symbol of plague out of the Middle Ages. It's an

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Speaker 1: image that has never quite been able to shed well,

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Speaker 1: and people would look to the rat to try to ascertain,

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Speaker 1: you know, what the disease was doing, because if a

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Speaker 1: large population of rats were dying out, that was usually

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Speaker 1: a precursor to a plague coming and rolling down the street, right.

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Speaker 1: But it turns out the the rats were actually in

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Speaker 1: concert if you can say that with fleas. It was

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Speaker 1: really the fleas that we're carrying this and um reinfecting

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Speaker 1: the rats, which would then bring the plague to the

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Speaker 1: rat was really just a middleman in this whole plague business. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, you're right, I please please kind of

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Speaker 1: got away scot free here, um with the with the

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Speaker 1: old infant infesting of people's houses and streets and all

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Speaker 1: that good stuff. But you can imagine this medieval German

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Speaker 1: townsman looking into this, looking under the floorboards, prying him open.

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Speaker 1: Rats are scurring back, and he sees a rat king

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Speaker 1: down there. He sees, uh, say, I don't know, eight,

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Speaker 1: say ten, say thirty two? Um, rats with their tails

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Speaker 1: just intertwined into this vast, tangled knot of just grossness.

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Speaker 1: And imagine him seeing that and and knowing even then

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Speaker 1: that what this, what this might mean? You can just

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Speaker 1: you can you can imagine that being just such a

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Speaker 1: dire omen because it would mean you were living in

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Speaker 1: pretty close confines with a lot of rats, right well,

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Speaker 1: and that that cluster of rats could perhaps contain its

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Speaker 1: own bubonic plague, right Um. I mean that that would

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Speaker 1: be the fear, especially if that was the story that

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Speaker 1: was told you over and over growing up, particularly in Germany,

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Speaker 1: where apparently, um, well you know, some people have said

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Speaker 1: that a lot of these rat kings have been found.

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Speaker 1: And again, just to go back to this, we are

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Speaker 1: talking about a mass of rats entangled together, bound by blood,

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Speaker 1: fecal matter and other filth. Yeah, but of course aren't

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Speaker 1: we all uh yes, not today I took a shower. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean on a figurative level, you know. But the

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Speaker 1: rat and Konig, the rat king, it's been a really

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Speaker 1: enduring image in Germany. You see it when you try. Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll get into sort of the possibilities of it existing

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Speaker 1: in real life and some of the arguments for and

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Speaker 1: against in a in a second. But right, but just

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Speaker 1: the idea of the rat king a again, I like

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Speaker 1: to think of it as an exaggeration of our attitudes

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Speaker 1: towards rats. B There have been some arguments that rat catchers.

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Speaker 1: Because you have a rat problem in the city, you

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Speaker 1: of course have a booming industry of rat catching, and

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Speaker 1: that is that's something that existed for along ago. It

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Speaker 1: still exists in the form of pet control, but they

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Speaker 1: tend not to call themselves rat catchers. Yeah, but that

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Speaker 1: kind of pestilence, thankfully, is not as widespread as it

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Speaker 1: used to be. But you would have rat catchers that

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Speaker 1: would catch a bunch of rats and sometimes they would

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Speaker 1: apparently tie their tails together as an easy way to

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Speaker 1: bring them in because you'd have kind of like a

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Speaker 1: rat bounty, like bring us, bring us eight rats, get

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Speaker 1: eight dollars. And I'm like, all right, well, I don't

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Speaker 1: have forgot my rats ack today. What am I gonna do?

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Speaker 1: I better string all their tails together and and bring

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Speaker 1: them in in a big grotesque heat. So there's that,

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Speaker 1: and then you have all these ideas, two very focal

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Speaker 1: ideas of the rats having some form of king or

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Speaker 1: having some form of queen. And in some of these

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Speaker 1: models of the king, the the rat king either is

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Speaker 1: this tangle of rats or it sets upon a tangle

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Speaker 1: of rat tails. And of course people have loved that

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Speaker 1: image to just in terms of of using that model

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Speaker 1: to apply to perceptions of crooked human rulers. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther called the pope a lot of things. And

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Speaker 1: one of the things that he called the pope and

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Speaker 1: one of his many die tribes was a rat king

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Speaker 1: rat and coning, that's right, sitting on the backs of

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Speaker 1: his subjects, basically being well fed. So this again, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's this image of this rat king sort of controlling

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Speaker 1: this swarm um and profiting from it. Really, right, And

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Speaker 1: even our beloved nutcracker ballet right, yeah, by some Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the rat king shows up there. Yeah, and the and

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Speaker 1: now in the versions that I had to sit through

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Speaker 1: a year after year as a child because my sisters

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Speaker 1: were all in ballet, the rat never had more than

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Speaker 1: one head. But apparently if you go back to some

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Speaker 1: of the older writings of the tale, uh, he'll have

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Speaker 1: more than one head. Calling back to this idea of

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Speaker 1: the true rat king, I'm going to say that some

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Speaker 1: producers sat down and said, you know what, this is

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Speaker 1: a great Pope tale, but maybe we should just have

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Speaker 1: one head because we really want to sell some tickets

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Speaker 1: to this and this is just way too nightmarish. All

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Speaker 1: the kids are like, ah, here's a foreheaded rat king. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: nothing around. I put it to anyone out there who's

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Speaker 1: involved in the ballet industry. Is it an industry? Would

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Speaker 1: you say, big industry? Yeah? That you know, the Nutcracker

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Speaker 1: is one of those things you hollowed every year because

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a guaranteed moneymaker. I think, and and

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Speaker 1: I think there is a tendency to maybe get lazy

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Speaker 1: with the Nutcracker suite. So the next time somebody staging

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Speaker 1: a performance, I say, do an old school rat king,

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Speaker 1: get eight male dancers out there, tie them together, and

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Speaker 1: have them dance throughout the play, or at least throughout

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Speaker 1: the first act before all the candy shows up. I

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Speaker 1: like this idea of doing this kind of a cob nutcracker.

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Speaker 1: Actually they should do it for adults, and it should

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Speaker 1: be a puppet show. I like it. Ok, we just

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Speaker 1: made it all right, all right? So those are some

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Speaker 1: of the ideas about the rat king as folk tale.

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Speaker 1: We should probably take a break, and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're going to get into some of these alleged examples

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Speaker 1: of real rat kings and what we can say about

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Speaker 1: their legitimacy. And also we'll go to the microbial level

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Speaker 1: and exact them in some some rather tiny rat king.

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Speaker 1: So let's pick with us, all right, we're back rat king.

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Speaker 1: Rat king. The earliest report comes from Germany in fifteen

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Speaker 1: sixty four, right, Yes, so they the sightings have been

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Speaker 1: around for a while. Um, but a credible sighting of

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Speaker 1: a live rat king has never really been confirmed, right.

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Speaker 1: I Mean, we have some stories here and there. There

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Speaker 1: was a really neat one out of Estonia. This was

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Speaker 1: the rat King of Sorrow. I like the references to

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Speaker 1: the rat kings as the rat king of as if

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Speaker 1: they actually had some sort of leaders dominion over. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was a really cool and we were reading an

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Speaker 1: article about from one Andre Milgun. This is January six,

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Speaker 1: two thousand five. You have this just sort of your

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Speaker 1: average Estonian and he finds one so allegedly finds a

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Speaker 1: rat king on the floor of his shed. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: animals are, you know, tither. They're unable to escape, So

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Speaker 1: the farmer's sun comes in with a stick and kills

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Speaker 1: it kills them. You know, it depends that you want

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Speaker 1: to frame that. But so apparently this cluster contains sixteen

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Speaker 1: rats and their tails were knotted together and get in

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Speaker 1: this lump that contained frozen sand and there had recently

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Speaker 1: been like a cold step And at the time that

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Speaker 1: they were discovered, only nine of the rats were live.

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Speaker 1: Three of the rats ended up falling off. The interesting

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Speaker 1: thing about this story is that the guy didn't immediately

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Speaker 1: call the newspaper. He thought it was weird. He put

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Speaker 1: it on a board and was like, hey, fellow Estonian villagers,

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Speaker 1: come check out this grossesque thing I found. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to leave it on the front porch for a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Come by and gock at it, and people came and

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Speaker 1: gocked at it. But then the zoologists found out about it, right,

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Speaker 1: was it like a cousin or something? Was a reporter

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Speaker 1: found out about it and hooked up a zoologists. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the next thing, you know, the zoologist come from

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Speaker 1: the museum at the University of Tartu and uh, this

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Speaker 1: is the natural history Zoological museum and they come and

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Speaker 1: collect it and preserve it. Now alcohol and you can

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Speaker 1: still apparently go and see this rat king, although if

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Speaker 1: I understand it right, some of them are missing because

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Speaker 1: other critters have come along and broken off a piece

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Speaker 1: or yeah, I think three of them were missing, and

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Speaker 1: all of them were kind of in they like some

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Speaker 1: of them have their brains eating out, like the thing

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Speaker 1: you know, which is gonna happen with a rat king here,

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Speaker 1: it's uh, it's just you have to offer it up.

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Speaker 1: And there were some other examples that he cited in

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Speaker 1: this uh that the Andreas cited in this article of

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Speaker 1: Estonian rat king's um there was one in nineteen seventy one.

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Speaker 1: The one in nineteen seventy one only because this of

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Speaker 1: three live rats allegedly, So that's that's pretty rating. Rat

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Speaker 1: king Yeah, like if you were to bring that to

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Speaker 1: a party, you would you would get some looks. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then there was another one in between nineteen fifteen

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Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty that was supposed to be more a

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Speaker 1: bust and Uh. The interesting thing about so many of

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Speaker 1: these accounts is like we're talking about the folk lore

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Speaker 1: aspect of it, and the initially you can't help but think,

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Speaker 1: um crypto zoology. You can't help it call be on

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Speaker 1: this because it's so it's so fantastic and so tied

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Speaker 1: in with myths and again our exaggerations of our fears.

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Speaker 1: It is essentially a monster of fantasy, or so it seems.

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Speaker 1: But then you look at these accounts and the guys

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Speaker 1: who are really into studying rat kings, and granted there

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Speaker 1: are not that many people who are into um empirically

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Speaker 1: studying rat kings, they tend to make into some arguments

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Speaker 1: for how this could actually happen. Yeah, you can tell

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Speaker 1: that they're really wishing that this were they could say

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Speaker 1: definitively rat kings exist, Right, There's there's some sort of

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Speaker 1: hope there in trying to explain it. But at the

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Speaker 1: same time they will look at the unlikeliness that these

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Speaker 1: conditions would actually exist for a rat king, um swarm.

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Speaker 1: I guess you could say to create itself. Yeah, Like

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Speaker 1: first thing, let's go go ahead and say it. Like

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Speaker 1: the most obvious thing was somebody faked a rat king.

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Speaker 1: Yeah right. All you have to do is get a

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Speaker 1: bunch of dead rats, which is not hard, especially if

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Speaker 1: you're a rat catcher. Right, if you're a rat catcher,

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Speaker 1: easy to get. I mean we could probably we could

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Speaker 1: build the rat king today if we needed to. We

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Speaker 1: could find them. We have a public comportation system. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, seriously, after the podcast, after the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we should we should do it, Okay, but yeah, you

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Speaker 1: just get a bunch of rats, dead ones, tie their

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Speaker 1: tails together. You're good to go. As it turns out,

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Speaker 1: you can't actually um and and apparently some people have

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Speaker 1: tried this, you can't tie rats tails together while they're conscious.

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Speaker 1: You would have to uh, you have to put them

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Speaker 1: under with something, which creates a whole lot more work

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Speaker 1: easier to just say if you beat them to death

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Speaker 1: of the broomstick. Well, and that just feels really serial

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Speaker 1: killer ishus on you're like some sort of crazed rat

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Speaker 1: serial killer. Yeah, I mean it's bad enough that you're

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Speaker 1: trying a bunch of dead rats together. Uh, at least

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Speaker 1: have them be dead rats. So so that's obviously one

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Speaker 1: huge possibility is that these are fabrications. This kind of

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Speaker 1: thing happens all the time with with any number of things.

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Speaker 1: That the Fiji Mermaid being in a classic example of this,

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Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, Fiji Mermaid. We talked about this um

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Speaker 1: in a previous podcast. And the Fiji Mermaids made up

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Speaker 1: of all sorts of different animal holes and you know,

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Speaker 1: part fish, you know, I believe there's some bird parts

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Speaker 1: in there. All. Yeah, some monkey school and it is

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Speaker 1: a wonderful looking creature. I mean, you look at you,

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Speaker 1: you think, God, I do wish that did exist, but

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Speaker 1: unfortunately it did not. They brought one to Atlanta's Fermbank

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Speaker 1: Museum a while back. Did you make it out to

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Speaker 1: that exhibit? I did not like the fantasy creatures thing.

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Speaker 1: Didn't you see one too at just like some sort

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Speaker 1: of roadside museum? Oh yeah, I think they had one

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Speaker 1: in the in a Bida Springs um uh, Louisiana. There's

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Speaker 1: an oddity museum that has a bunch of stuff like

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Speaker 1: that that's all assembled. Yeah. I remember getting the iPhone picture. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they did. They definitely had a Fiji mermaid. They also

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Speaker 1: had all sorts of weird crocodile fish contraptions that the

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Speaker 1: owner had found at the mystery house, the Abta Springs,

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Speaker 1: the Abida Springs mystery house. Okay, so moving along from

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Speaker 1: the possibility that these are fake, what are some of

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Speaker 1: the the reasons this could actually happen? Right right? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So fear is one reason that's brought up, or they say,

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Speaker 1: you know, if if if you were happening, if you

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Speaker 1: happen to come upon these swarm of rats and they

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Speaker 1: were essentially just sort of cornered, that they might, in

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Speaker 1: fear all began to run the other way and tangle

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Speaker 1: up in each other, which seems kind of spacious, right right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: especially since a lot of these are found supposally in burrows,

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Speaker 1: places where they're going to feel safe anyway, So like,

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Speaker 1: why when are they why would they be panicking? Exactly

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Speaker 1: exactly because when people found them right there, there was

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Speaker 1: plenty of room where they were. It wasn't like they

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Speaker 1: were just cornered. And and again there has never been

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Speaker 1: an account of a live rat king, so nobody's actually

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Speaker 1: been able to substantiate and say, oh, yeah, I found

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Speaker 1: it right here. I've got some some video, let's throw

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Speaker 1: it up on YouTube. Another possibility, and this was when

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Speaker 1: I ran across from the Natural History Museum in Altenburg, Germany,

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Speaker 1: which actually has a mummified specimen of thirty two entangled

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Speaker 1: rats on display that is supposedly dates back to the

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Speaker 1: argument they were going with is that rat pups are

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Speaker 1: still very naked in there, and their tails, but their

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Speaker 1: tails are very mobile, and so their tails are flipping

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Speaker 1: around and they end up getting entangled that way, and

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Speaker 1: then they can't leave and they starve again. That's kind

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Speaker 1: of suspect to whether whether that would actually happen or not. Right,

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Speaker 1: And then there's the frozen uh, this idea that that

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Speaker 1: they could be sitting there in a very cold environment,

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Speaker 1: huddling together and somehow their own in their own filth,

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Speaker 1: that's right. So we've got all sorts of mucus and

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Speaker 1: blood and and and just nesting materials there too. Anyone

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Speaker 1: who's ever seen a rat nest we talk about that's

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Speaker 1: a piece of our our language, the idea of a

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Speaker 1: rat's nest. It's just this random stuff. So there's all

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Speaker 1: sorts of things in there that could conceivably uh form

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Speaker 1: this google cluster of rat's tails, and and then suddenly

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Speaker 1: there's cold snap right right that they then that cold

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Speaker 1: snuff would have to be like a freeze dried cold snap, right, um,

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Speaker 1: not something that usually happens gradually. Uh you know, so again,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't really hold water. It doesn't really make sense

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Speaker 1: that they would just be flash frozen, which I think

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Speaker 1: brings this to the conclusion and most people that this

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Speaker 1: this is an animal of cryptozoology really and truly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's really hard not to side with that. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the the article we were reading, the guy made a

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Speaker 1: really impassioned argument for this Estonian case because he was like,

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Speaker 1: this guy had no motive, he had no profit. He um,

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Speaker 1: he didn't attempt it to like it was falling apart

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Speaker 1: out of the tangles, like he wasn't trying to tighten

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Speaker 1: everything back up and retie the rat king. He also

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Speaker 1: didn't know about rat kings at all folklore and otherwise. Yeah,

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00:19:42,520 --> 00:19:44,040
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't be the first. Like, you know, it's

388
00:19:44,040 --> 00:19:46,640
Speaker 1: an awesome idea. Sometimes people, you know, we've all had

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Speaker 1: that moment where we're like, dude, I just had this

390
00:19:48,840 --> 00:19:50,760
Speaker 1: awesome idea, what if what have I tied a bunch

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Speaker 1: of dead rats together? Yeah? And then people are like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you mean a rat king And you're like, oh, that's

393
00:19:54,560 --> 00:19:56,280
Speaker 1: already a thing, and they're like, yeah, that's kind of

394
00:19:56,280 --> 00:19:58,520
Speaker 1: been a thing for centuries. He's like, oh, man, yeah,

395
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Speaker 1: well what was what was I did? Do you want

396
00:20:00,240 --> 00:20:02,520
Speaker 1: to slow down the farm? So yeah, we tend we

397
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Speaker 1: tend to have to side with the with the whole

398
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Speaker 1: cryptosyological angle. I mean, granted, if rat kings do exist,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a rare, rare thing, and most of the

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Speaker 1: time we're not going to find it because these things

401
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:16,920
Speaker 1: are gonna die, right because they can't. They can't really

402
00:20:17,320 --> 00:20:21,000
Speaker 1: um hunt or or forage for food in that condition,

403
00:20:21,320 --> 00:20:24,440
Speaker 1: and they would rot or be eaten by their fellow

404
00:20:24,520 --> 00:20:27,520
Speaker 1: rats or by other organisms. But still, from a science angle,

405
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Speaker 1: we have to side with the with the idea that

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Speaker 1: this is probably bunk. But you, sir, you ferreted out

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Speaker 1: the real Ramona, the real rat king, that's right. I

408
00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:39,440
Speaker 1: I refused to take no for an answer, even from

409
00:20:39,640 --> 00:20:42,640
Speaker 1: well even from science. Uh, when it comes to something

410
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:44,919
Speaker 1: as interesting as the rat king. I was like, I

411
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Speaker 1: was thinking surely there's something that is equatable to this, right,

412
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:52,280
Speaker 1: and sure enough, um, we do encounter something a rat

413
00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:57,080
Speaker 1: king like effect with trematodes. These are small parasitic flatworms

414
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Speaker 1: that use vertebrates as their definite hosts and mollusks as

415
00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:04,880
Speaker 1: their intermediate host. All right, we're talking about mollusks and birds, right,

416
00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:09,040
Speaker 1: So so yeah, they go through several of these parasites

417
00:21:09,320 --> 00:21:13,360
Speaker 1: go through several different phases, uh, several different forms. And

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00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:16,800
Speaker 1: the form that goes through uh typically like you know,

419
00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:21,280
Speaker 1: like a bird or a duck is a circaria. Okay,

420
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:25,439
Speaker 1: and these are larval forms, um and uh. They have

421
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:30,160
Speaker 1: different ways of entering a species. UM. Some use their

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00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:33,359
Speaker 1: little tails to swim for lack of a better phrase,

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00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:36,680
Speaker 1: up into the duck. And then others have actually evolved

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Speaker 1: to have elongated tail so they can look like a prey.

425
00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 1: And it's like kind of a fishing lure effect. You know.

426
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,119
Speaker 1: I imagine one of those lures with the long wriggly tails.

427
00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 1: The bird sees it, it eats it, and oops, you

428
00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 1: just stay a parasite. Uh, it needs you to advance

429
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:53,440
Speaker 1: out of this form. Well, there are some of these

430
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:58,360
Speaker 1: um circaria. They have these long tails, and they will

431
00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:02,560
Speaker 1: actually intertwine with each other and form not not something

432
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:04,960
Speaker 1: that not only looks kind of like a rat king,

433
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:10,040
Speaker 1: but biologists actually call call it a ratt and cone

434
00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:13,000
Speaker 1: eg circaria, and and it's interesting one they do this,

435
00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:15,720
Speaker 1: the primary reason being it's the same reason that the

436
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:18,119
Speaker 1: some of the circaria have the extra long tails to

437
00:22:18,160 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 1: attract the bird and make it think that it's um,

438
00:22:20,520 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 1: it's something good to eat. So if one is trying

439
00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 1: to pull this out and trying to get a lot

440
00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 1: of attention, better than a bunch of them cluster together, right,

441
00:22:28,359 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: retwine those little tails. And then they also use it

442
00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:34,399
Speaker 1: for increased mobility, which is rather interesting. That's right. They

443
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 1: also can conserve some of their energy if they all

444
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:39,080
Speaker 1: work together. And I really like this idea of this

445
00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:42,520
Speaker 1: trojan horse sort of situation. You know, it's like, oh,

446
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: come here, ducky um, I have a delicious surprise for you,

447
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:51,080
Speaker 1: and then unleashing all of these parasites upon the duck. Yeah. It.

448
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:56,680
Speaker 1: This occurs across five different trematode superfamilies, and the members

449
00:22:56,720 --> 00:23:00,680
Speaker 1: of this um, of this uh, this rat king um. Again,

450
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:03,760
Speaker 1: they rotate in the same direction, generating a current that

451
00:23:03,800 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 1: moves a batch up up to seven hundred circaria efficiently,

452
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:11,760
Speaker 1: So there have seven hundred strong this particular triumatode rat king.

453
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:16,760
Speaker 1: So I just find that that fascinating. Um, they're they're

454
00:23:16,760 --> 00:23:19,120
Speaker 1: a little yoked tales, I know, I'm telling you, it's

455
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of frightening to think that parasites are

456
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: just so clever, Yeah, that you know that they could

457
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 1: cloak themselves and be like, yeah, look I am delicious. Yeah,

458
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: and of course I can't help but then apply that

459
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: model to rats and say like, well, all right, well,

460
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: was there any reason that rats could conceivably evolve any

461
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:39,960
Speaker 1: kind of similar function, if not now, then eventually. But

462
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 1: but I don't think it really makes sense because hey,

463
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 1: they're not parasites. B there's no increased mobility or energy

464
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: conservation in forming one of these clusters, because it seems

465
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,800
Speaker 1: like it's just a chaotic affair. If if rats were

466
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: to form into a rat king. I'm also thinking too,

467
00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: that it would really inhibit their ability to um too,

468
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 1: squeeze themselves through sewer pipes up through your toilet, which,

469
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 1: by the way, they do because they follow the scent

470
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: of fecal matter. Yeah, So I mean you couldn't, But

471
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:14,840
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be horrifying to open your toilet bowl and

472
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: a rat king? I mean that really is the stuff

473
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 1: of nightmares right there. Yeah, I mean, especially you have

474
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:23,239
Speaker 1: your rooming with people. Come on, who left the rat

475
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:27,400
Speaker 1: king in the toilet? Oh? I have so many um

476
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:31,400
Speaker 1: digestive checks. Definitely a flush it down situation. Yeah, alright,

477
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: so rat kings. There you go. I hope everyone leaves

478
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: this podcast with a little more information about them. Uh

479
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you've only heard about them in a

480
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: Terry Pratchett book or a reference on Dirty Rock, But

481
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:47,000
Speaker 1: I dare say we went into unprecedented detail about the

482
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: rat king, and you know, the door is still open.

483
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: Maybe they exist, but most likely not. I'm going to

484
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 1: keep a keep my mind open a little bit. You know.

485
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:56,680
Speaker 1: It was kind of like the big Foot. I tend

486
00:24:56,720 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 1: to doubt it, but maybe maybe one day. In the meantime,

487
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: we have microbial ones. All right, Well, hey, let's call

488
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: over the robots and see if we have any listener mail.

489
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,199
Speaker 1: All right, we just heard from Lizzie and Lizzie right

490
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,680
Speaker 1: then and says, hey, Robert and Jubi, I was listening

491
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: to your podcast today about hugging, and I was a

492
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,719
Speaker 1: little bit surprised you didn't mention the hug shirt. I

493
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: was at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago

494
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: back in August and saw this shirt on display. Being

495
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,159
Speaker 1: a new transplant to Chicago and living over a thousand

496
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: miles from from my loved ones, I just thought about

497
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: how nice it would be to have a hug from

498
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: someone I missed. You send the hugs to a recipient

499
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: wearing their hug shirt by cell phone. It has somewhere

500
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:38,920
Speaker 1: between fourteen fifteen centers all over the upper body to

501
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:41,880
Speaker 1: simulate a real hug. I thought it was really neat,

502
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: and I was positive you were going to mention it

503
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: on the podcast and surprised that you didn't. And she

504
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 1: includes a video ironically, this is a how stuff orders

505
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 1: to go about this, right, Yeah, yeah, you know. Sometimes

506
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: awesome stuff also the tracks, and that's when we depend

507
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:57,199
Speaker 1: on awesome folks to let us know about it. I

508
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 1: can't help but be reminded of the reading the the

509
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: idea of sending a hug dally like pushing a button,

510
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 1: and then someone gets a hug miles and miles away

511
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: on the other side of the globe of the this

512
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 1: Japanese device. It allows one to send a kiss over

513
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 1: the internet, and not just like the kind of smooth

514
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:17,399
Speaker 1: you would give a child, but like a big, tuney kiss,

515
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 1: like a full blown French kiss. Wow. Yeah, So do

516
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: you put some sort of mouth piece on? Yeah, it's

517
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 1: like a mouth piece. It looks like something with dinnis

518
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: would put in your mouth in sexy already. Yeah, And

519
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:31,159
Speaker 1: there's like an apparatus. It's look it's kind of like

520
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 1: a I guess it looks kind of like imagine a

521
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: joystick for a video game that you stick inside your

522
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:38,679
Speaker 1: mouth and play with your tongue. And that's about what

523
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: this consists of. Wow, this this podcast really is the

524
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: stuff of nightmares right now. Rat kings and joysticks. Yeah,

525
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: but no, I think the hug shirt is pretty wonderful.

526
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about how it's far less creepy

527
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:59,479
Speaker 1: than the the other hug mechanism we were talking about,

528
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: in which it kind of looks like a mannequin that

529
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: you suction cut yourself with with the best that you

530
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: wear and it just sort of looks like the person's

531
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,959
Speaker 1: molesting the mannequin. But I really love the idea of

532
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:14,159
Speaker 1: having a hug shirt instead and having these pulses come

533
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: through from someone you know, it's just me being old passions.

534
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:20,159
Speaker 1: It's a much more old fashioned and tamer version of

535
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:24,160
Speaker 1: other remote control stimulation devices. So I think it's great.

536
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,199
Speaker 1: There you go. That's that's love in the future right

537
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: there exactly. So, Hey, if you have anything you would

538
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: like to share about love in the future, about hugs

539
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:35,400
Speaker 1: awkward or technological in nature, or about the mighty rat

540
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,639
Speaker 1: king rat kings that you've known, rat kings that you've loved,

541
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: rat kings that you've found under your floorboards and burned

542
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: out of fear, let us know. You can find us

543
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter. We are below the Mind on

544
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 1: both of those, and you can send us an email

545
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure

546
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,719
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.

547
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:01,360
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Works staff as we explore the most

548
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.