WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Rat King 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.239 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:11.639 is Robert Lamb. It is, of course Saturday, so we 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:13.640 have a vault episode for you. This is going to 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.960 be one of our holiday episodes from last year, titled 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.560 The Rat King, originally published twelve twelve, twenty twenty three. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:23.360 Let's dive right in. 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.120 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is. 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.800 Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And on today's 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:45.960 episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind, we are going 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.360 to be talking about the wonderful, the Glorious Rat King, which, 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.199 believe it or not, this is a Christmas episode, isn't it. 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.000 Rob? That's right? This is one of a pair of 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.640 Christmas Core episodes we're busting out this week. You can 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.080 probably guess what the next one's going to be. But yeah, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:05.360 I mean, the Holidays bring on an abundance of traditions, right, 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.520 I mean, we have the Christian Nativity, we have Santa Claus, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:11.720 we have other things like Crampus, we have Marley's Ghost, 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.120 we have the nineteen ninety sci fi action film I 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:17.600 Come in Peace, and of course we have The Nutcracker. 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:19.520 Oh okay, here's the tie in. 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:24.920 So most of you are probably familiar with Tchaikovsky's ballet 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:30.480 The Nutcracker. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.720 seen it many many times, this basically this is how 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:38.040 it plays out. The first half is a rather imaginative 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.600 tale of a nutcracker prince coming to life and with 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:44.600 the help of a little girl, waging a battle against 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.360 an evil mouse king, culminating in a cool sword fight. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.760 And then the rest of the ballet, which feels about 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.840 usually about like three or four hours long. It is 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.400 just a victory lap of dancing, just one dance after 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:02.480 the other, no more stay, no more conflict, just dancing. 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.960 What do I remember about the Nutcracker. I remember like 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.239 a grandfather clock and like a sort of creepy, mysterious 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.720 grandfather figure. I remember a lady with a giant dress 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:18.720 that a bunch of children come out of. And I remember, yeah, 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:19.760 I guess the rat king. 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.320 Yeah yeah, or I guess it's specifically it's a mouse king, 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.960 but it's very closely tied no pun intended with the 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:32.440 concept of the rat king. Now. The ballet was based 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:37.960 upon German romantic author Eta Hoffman's eighteen sixteen short story 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.360 The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, in which the titular 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.320 mouse king is described as follows. This is the This 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:50.040 is from the LRC translation. Marie was not afraid of mice, 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:52.919 and she could not help being amused by this sight. 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.560 She stood watching the mice come from all directions, when 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.200 suddenly there came a sharp and terrible piping noise, and 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:04.480 seven mouse heads with seven shining crowns upon them, rose 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.040 through the floor. And behind them wriggled a mouse's body, 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.440 on which the seven heads had all grown. Then the 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:16.000 whole army of my shouted in full chorus, and went trot, 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.480 trot right up to the cupboard. In fact, to Marie, 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:21.320 who was standing beside it. 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:23.799 Wait a minute, I don't remember that this is a 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:26.920 single mouse's body, but it's got seven mouse heads. 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:33.800 Yes, this is commonly not depicted in performances of the ballet, 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.240 though sometimes it is. Sometimes ballets will decide to get creative, 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:40.720 get a little dark, and dive back into these roots. 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.600 But I have more passages to read here. There's more 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.400 of this. It's great, okay. Later on in the text, 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.400 Hoffman writes, but that moment two enemy marksmen took hold 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.160 of nutcrackers wooden cloak and held him fast. Squeaking in 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.040 triumph from seven throats, the mouse King sprang forward to 0:03:59.120 --> 0:03:59.920 take his kill. 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:01.920 Whoa, oh, and. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.360 Get this one, This one may be the best. She 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.560 could only watch as the mouse King squeezed himself out 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.720 through a hole in the wall. His fourteen eyes and 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.280 seven crowns glistened as he bounded through the room and 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.000 made a huge leap up to the top of Marie's nightstand. 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.159 Yikes, I'm getting flashes of Stephen King's cat's eye. 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:26.200 Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this is a creature of horror. 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:29.200 Yeah, less cute than I recall from the ballet. So 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.440 this is a monster creature that is a mouse with 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:35.279 seven heads on a single body. 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:37.800 That's right, And there are other descriptions in the text 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.960 that emphasize the horror of multiplicity into a mouse. Cumig 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.800 Now Hoffman, who of seventeen seventy six through eighteen twenty two, 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.600 was a dark romantic. One of his early novels, eighteen 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:54.679 fifteen's The Devil's Elixirs, concerns a doppelganger. He didn't originate 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.080 the term or the concept but his work may have 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.640 helped popularize the concept. He is also well known for 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:05.240 his eighteen seventeen story The Sandman, which references a folkloric 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:08.440 entity and kind of a horror spin, and it also 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:13.800 features a female automaton. He's apparently noted for often employing 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:17.159 optical motifs, which include not only the doubling of one's 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.479 identity as with the Doppelganger, but also the multitude of 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:22.640 heads on The Mouse King. And I think he makes 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.400 use of other more direct uses of optical technology in 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:28.919 places as well, like telescopes and so forth. 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:33.479 You're saying optical motifs because like the doubling might be 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:36.760 like a kind of multiplicity of images you would see 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.600 through like a prism or some kind of thing a 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:40.840 lens or thing like that. 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.480 Yeah, yeah, Like, for instance, in these passages from the 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:48.440 Nutcracker in the Mouse King, you get a sense of 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.240 like almost like that of a kaleidoscope. You know, there's 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.520 something just optically out of line with this thing that 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:58.239 is moving towards you the reader, or towards Marie, the character. 0:05:58.480 --> 0:05:59.520 I understand now. 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.520 Of course, Hoffman would have been acquainted with folklore, which 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.800 we also see in his referencing of the sandman. The sandman, 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:09.240 of course, typically sprinkles sand or dust upon a sleeper's eyes. 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.919 I think we all know that basic idea. But in 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.280 Hoffman's work, the sandman is said to steal the eyes 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.200 of children who refuse to go to bed. The sand 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.160 he puts on their eyes causes their eyeballs to fall out, 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:23.719 and then he collects set eyeballs and takes them to 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:25.440 the moon to feed his children. 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:26.320 Wow. 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.800 Yeah, And of course Hoffman would have definitely been familiar 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.680 with the concept of the rat king, which seemingly plays 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.719 into his invention here as well. Now, I was looking 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.240 at a couple of sources, both by an author by 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:42.239 the name of David Blameyer's. One of them is Telling 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.520 Tales the Impact of Germany on English Children's Books, seventeen 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:47.520 eighty through nineteen eighteen. This is a two thousand and 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:52.240 nine publication, and he points out that Hoffman's description of 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.039 the mouse king references both folkloric tales of multi headed 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.000 dragons as well as the dragon from the Book of Revelation. 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.680 Be clear, the author doesn't make any mention of rat kings, 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.640 as we'll be discussing them later As an inspiration here. 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.640 Right, Okay, but you can clearly see how knowledge of 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:16.520 the biological or alleged biological entity the rat king would 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.080 have would have or could have inspired the idea of 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:20.360 a mouse with seven heads. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:26.200 Yeah. Yeah, Now there's another example. This is sort of 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:30.000 folk little bit more, I guess specifically literature. There's another 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:32.880 work by the same author, the Folklore Tradition in Germany, 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:35.920 where he mentions a rat king by the name of 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.240 Berlibby that pops up in what Longreads author Adrian Dobb 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.440 describes as a kunsmachen quote, an art fairy tale, a 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.720 narrative that a writer fashions to resemble something you might 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:52.560 hear from a farm hand at your father's estate. Okay, So, 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:57.640 according to Dobb, here again this excellent piece on Longreads. 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.520 I recommend it if you want some more rat king action. 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.360 Here he points out that the rat king in this 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.800 work is described as a king of all rodents. He's 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.360 like a literal ruler of the rodent world, but is 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.640 singular in body and in head, though it is implied 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.360 that his tale is nodded with that of his wife, 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.080 the rat Queen. Aw that's sweet, I guess, kind of sweet. 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:27.360 It was this particular work. In this particular creation, Berlibby 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:32.160 was the creation of Ernst mountst Arndt, who lives seventeen 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:35.640 sixty nine through eighteen sixty a German nationalist, historian, writer 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.600 and poet who in this tale seems to have been 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.640 largely commenting on the rise of Napoleon, critiquing the idea 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.640 that some might want to rise above their station within 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.360 their own nation via the interference of a foreign power. 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:55.160 And this, according to Dobb, was two years after Hoffman's tale. 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.160 I don't know that there's any indication that like Hoffman's 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.400 tale inspired this one. I think it's more probably the 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:02.600 idea that like the rat King, was like a general 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.680 concept already that was established. And we see two different 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:10.160 authors exploring things with the idea, but for different purposes. 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.240 Ah okay. So even in these slightly altered or just 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.719 different forms, we see that the idea of the rat 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:22.040 king is often used to symbolize something. It means something 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.880 about religious life, or political life, or morality. 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:32.240 That's right. Doab, writing about the example in Arnt's work, writes, quote, 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.760 the rat King appears like an almost perfect parody of 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:40.280 the community building ambitions that dominated German public life during 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.320 and following the Napoleonic Wars. So he says, you know, 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.679 the community building we're talking about here. This would have 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.800 been things like community singing, community storytelling, various community minded 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.280 efforts that were present in the culture of the time period. 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:59.559 And the mouse king is presented perhaps as the unpleasant 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:03.840 under belly of social cohesion. Quote the rat represented the 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.320 dark side of community, the dark side of dependency, the 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:09.679 dark side of proximity, tied. 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.679 So closely to one another that you, in the end, 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.000 are all doomed, doomed to a common fate. 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:16.600 Yes, yeah, And so all of this would have been 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:20.840 during a century in which Germany was transitioning from a 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.840 largely rural society to a largely urban one. But of 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.080 course these literary treatments did not invent the concept. Rather, 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.720 again they find imaginative and or metaphorical uses of something 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:36.680 that was already present in the public mindset. So what 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.600 could that be? What could they have possibly been commenting 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.600 on what had been seen, what had been witnessed, what 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.080 was alive and the zeitgeist of the time. 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.000 Right, So I guess this brings us to the question 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.400 many listeners probably already know the basic idea. But what 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.960 is a rat king In the common modern understanding, it 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.439 is a group of rats who are joined at the tail, 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:05.000 usually described or represented with the tails entangled in a 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.400 huge not ball, and going all the way back to 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:13.080 the sixteenth century, there have been dozens of documented accounts 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.520 of rats discovered in this state, multiple rats three or 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:22.960 more joined by the tail, sometimes hiding underneath floorboards, inside walls, 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:27.400 protruding from earthen burrows, often with the rats still alive, 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.240 arranged like the spokes of a wheel. And there are 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:35.640 also physical specimens of alleged rat kings preserved and photographed 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.000 with their tails entwined in this way, though of course 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:41.360 in these cases the rats are generally already dead, so 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.800 it can be hard to rule out hoaxes in the 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.199 case of like a rat king that's actually kept in 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:49.520 a museum somewhere that we'll have some educated commentary on 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.679 the plausibility of hoaxes versus natural origin later on. 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.760 I will say that you can certainly do some image 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.840 searches and see some rat kings are like rat kings, 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:03.160 but these are not pleasant images to look at, like 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.760 a lot of like monstrous curiosities or alleged curiosities of 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.239 the natural world or even the unnatural world, are interesting 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.199 to look at or cool looking. The rat king not 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.440 so much. I feel like it kind of seems to 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:22.680 catch on as an idea more so than it is 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:24.199 an actual symbol. Like, I don't know there are a 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.640 lot of say, bands that use the rat king as 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:28.520 their logo or anything of that nature. 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:30.840 Oh, I didn't even consider that, but I bet there 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:31.280 are some. 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.640 I bet there are some, but they're probably kind of, 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.120 you know, going for something outrageous and gross. 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.760 So we wanted to look at the question what are 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:45.319 these masses of mutually doomed rodents? Are they something that 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:50.040 actually forms in nature or merely a legendary cryptid that 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:54.040 inspired some taxidermy hoaxes, And if they do occur in nature, 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.480 why and how so? First of all, I want to 0:12:57.480 --> 0:12:59.839 mention a major source that I'm going to be using 0:12:59.880 --> 0:13:02.760 in this exploration, one of the best things I came across, 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.120 which is a book called Rats by an author named 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.280 Martin Hart, published by Alison and Busby, Originally published in 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.960 Dutch in nineteen seventy three, but with an English translation 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:17.480 by Arnold Palmeranz in nineteen eighty two, and this book 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:21.440 has an entire chapter devoted to ratkings and is just 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.960 generally an excellent resource on this topic. So to get 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.040 a flavor of what an encounter in the wild with 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.400 a ratking looks like, I'm going to share an account 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.760 from the beginning of Hart's chapter. So the setting is 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:38.200 a cold day in February nineteen sixty three, and this 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.559 is actually the most recent discovery of a rat king 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.600 that Hart recounts in his book, though there have been 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.120 other ones since then. This took place at a farm 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:52.360 in the Dutch town of Rukfenn. A farmer named Peeve 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.400 van Ninatten was out in his yard and he noticed 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.000 a squealing sound coming from the direction of the barn. 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.839 The farmer followed the squealing to its source, and when 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.040 he got to it, he noticed a black rat peering 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.520 out from under a heap of bean poles. The farmer 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:12.000 killed the rat, but then when he tried to pull 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.160 it out from under the poles, it wouldn't budge. It 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:18.400 was stuck to something, and further uncovering revealed that the 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.400 rat he had killed was somehow tied by the tail 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.560 to six other rats. He killed the other rats as well, 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:30.040 and then was left with this wheel of rats, consisting 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:34.840 of seven apparently well fed adults, two males, and five females. 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.920 They were of the species Rattus ratus, the black rat. 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:43.359 They were not brown rats or the species Ratus norwegicus, 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.360 which was a bit strange because they were found in 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.520 the barn and chicken coop area of the farm, which, 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:53.240 according to the farmer, was normally inhabited by brown rats 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.480 and not black rats, though the farmer knew that he 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.240 had black rats living in the loft of his house 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.800 some distance away. On closer examination of the tail knot, 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.680 most of the rats were tied only by the tips 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.520 of their tails, though one rat had basically its entire 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:14.160 tail tangled up. The knot also contained external material, like 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.720 some straw. The flesh of the tails appeared compressed where 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.640 it had been tied against the others, and an X 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.120 ray revealed that there were some bone fractures in the 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:30.000 tails and in the rats of their vertebrae. Examination indicated 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.480 that the tails appear to have been joined like this 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.000 for a while, which is a little perplexing because the 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.440 rats did appear to have eaten well like they didn't 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:42.440 appear emaciated and rob I've attached some pictures for you 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.520 to look at of the rat King of Rukfinn. Here's 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.280 the whole rat king with the seven individuals, and then 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.640 there's a close up of the tail knot. It does 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:51.680 look very grizzly. 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.680 Yeah, yeah, Worth noting, of course that rats tails are 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.400 I belief, semi prehensile. But you can imagine in a 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.240 situation that's if they were to come intertwined and certainly broken, 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.960 there'd be very little that rats could do to free themselves. 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.240 That's right. There are some accounts of people witnessing or 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:14.480 claiming to witness a rat here or there breaking out 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:18.880 of the tangle, like actually getting out, either by detaching 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.000 like part of its tail coming off, injuring itself to escape, 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.320 or managing to untangle and get out, but this seems rare. 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.560 Mostly the rats appear stuck this way, and to summarize 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.040 a large later section of Heart's chapter, a lot of 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.120 the accounts of rat king discoveries from history take basically 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.400 the same form as the story I just told. Someone 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:42.280 is attracted to the sound of squealing, and then they 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:47.080 discover behind or underneath something a single rat and then 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:49.640 they attack it and then later discover that it is 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.360 joined to at least two others in extreme instances dozens 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:53.920 of others. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.920 Yeah. Yeah, And in a lot of time, I've seen 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.520 multiple accounts where it's something you know, it's taking place at, 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:06.359 say a barn or perhaps an urban environment. I guess 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.439 you could point out that these would be you know, 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:16.520 human spaces, human places. Rats, of course, their populations growing 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.280 in the very places where human populations grow and living 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:21.879 alongside us in the shadows. 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.520 I think that is significant. And let's come back to 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:29.399 that when we talk about the conclusions of a paper 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:41.359 I'm going to get to later. So another section of 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.320 Heart's chapter here is an interesting diversion on the origin 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.879 of the name rat king. It is a kind of 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.320 weird thing to call a collection of rats tied together 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.600 by the tail, Like, what is especially kingly about this? 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.800 Right? Right? I mean, a king, by its very nature 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.840 is an individual room over the mini. We tend not 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:05.840 to think of a king as being a composite. 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:07.920 Of multiples exactly, But the way Heart lays it out, 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.720 I think you can kind of see the way the 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.919 the meaning applied to this term has has sort of 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.119 crept and morphed over time. So, according to Hart, the 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.240 term rat king is a direct translation of the medieval 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:24.360 German ratten koenig, though in this usage it originally had 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.560 nothing to do with tailknots. It meant quote, one who 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.639 lives well on the backs of others, So you can 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.199 think of a sort of opulent parasite, or in a 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.119 way one might argue any king somebody who you know, 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.520 lives off the labor of others. They live well, they're 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.040 you know, they're they're well fed, they get all the 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:46.200 luxury they desire with other people doing the work. And 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.760 that sort of social human association with the term rat 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.680 king is explained somewhat by its usage in the sixteenth 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:58.399 century text by an author named Conrad Gesner called Historia Animalium. 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:00.480 From what I can tell, this scene to be a 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:05.040 kind of a kind of great source document of like cryptozoologists. 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:09.119 They'll love looking back to Conrad Gessner's entries in this 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.080 But the point Gessner makes in this book, as summarized 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.520 by Heart, is quote, some would have it that the 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.359 rat wax is mighty in its old age and is 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:23.119 fed by its young. This is what's called the rat king. Okay, 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:25.480 So the idea is that like, some rats get like 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:30.359 old and venerable as rats go, and then the other 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.200 rats will start to serve it as a king. They'll 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:36.639 bring it food, they'll bring it little baubles and like 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.040 pieces of velvet or luxury items. You know, they're coming 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.960 to serve their rat king. So that rat king is 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.199 living well by doing nothing off of the labor of 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:48.800 the other rats in its nest. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.440 Of course, you could easily tell the same fancy old 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.600 story and point out that, hey, rats look after their elders, 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:56.400 how honorable. 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.200 Yeah, yeah, you could exactly say that. Though to be clear, I, 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.280 in featuring this story, I do not mean to endorse 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:05.320 the idea that there's biological evidence for this. This seems 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.040 to be more like a you know, an early modern 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.439 story about how rats work, not anything that's backed up 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.600 by research. Another early usage of the term rat king, 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.560 though apparently having nothing to do with the the you know, 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.359 the the wheel of rats tied together by the tail, 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.800 is a quote from the founder of the Protestant Reformation, 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:29.800 Martin Luther, in a passage attacking the Catholic Church. Luther says, quote, 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:33.840 the archbishops have a primate above them the primate's a patriarch, 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.600 and finally there is the pope, the king of the 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:38.160 rats right at the top. 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.359 Kind of kind of complicated here we have primates and rats. 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.960 Well, the primate's that's like a position in the Catholic Church. 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.280 Oh okay, sorry, I'm just picturing an actual primate. So 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.880 he's like Martin Luther is talking about apes, he's talking 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:59.080 about rats. He might be if flinging something at a devil. 0:20:59.200 --> 0:20:59.960 He's just sees his. 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.120 That usage of primate can be confusing and has confused 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.600 me in the past. Yeah, but no, he's just talking 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.200 about like the positions and like, yeah, the worst one 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.359 who's like sort of the the evil king at the 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.480 top of this institution that Luther hated, that's the rat 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.200 king the pope, And that Luther quote would have been 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.560 sixteenth century as well. Heart writes that after this the 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.880 term ratt and Koenig came to refer to a king 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.840 rat who sat on a throne made of knotted tails. 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:33.640 So this seems like there's some morphing now where you're 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.959 getting halfway to the rat king idea we have today. 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.160 And I guess in this formulation, if I'm picturing picturing 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:44.280 it right. It's not just that there are multiple rats 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.960 with their tails nodded, but there's a king rat riding 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:50.800 that knot of tails, like a palanquin or a litter. 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.920 You know, it's like sitting upon the throne of tails. 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.520 I'm a little hazy on where I saw this, but 0:21:57.560 --> 0:21:59.600 there was an old bit. I think Robert Snegel had 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.800 something to do with this, the comedian behind Triumph the 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:06.920 insult comic dog. But oh ok, the sketch. Perhaps listeners 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.720 can write in about where I'm remembering this from, but 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.399 the sketch was always the same. Here's a snake and 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:14.399 it has a sizeable lump in its body. It's like 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:17.280 an anaconda or something. And you have to guess what 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:19.600 the lump is based on the shape of it, And 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.439 so looking at the snake, the lump appears to be 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:26.000 an old woman in a rocking chair. And then they reveal, 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.199 after everyone's had a chance to guess, they reveal what 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.639 the contents of the rat stomach happens to be, and 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.399 it is a pile of dead rats in the shape 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:35.880 of a woman in a rocking chair. 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:40.080 That's good, But to come back to this image, it 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.359 is a striking image, though Heart says it is not 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:46.040 known where this idea first came from. But okay, so 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.400 that's like a rat king on a throne of knotted tails. 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:52.040 You take away the king and then what you've got 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:56.240 left is just rats with knotted tails. And according to Heart, 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:00.879 the first source to visually depict a rat king in 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:03.320 any form and this is I think, in the form 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:05.320 that we now understand it as just a group of 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:09.679 rats with noted tails. The first publication to contain this 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:14.159 was an edition of a sixteenth century book called the 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:19.679