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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And on today's episode

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Speaker 3: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we are going to

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Speaker 3: be talking about the Wonderful, the Glorious rat King, which,

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Speaker 3: believe it or not, this is a Christmas episode, isn't it, Rob?

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Speaker 2: That's right? This is one of a pair of Christmas

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Speaker 2: Core episodes we're busting out this week. You can probably

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Speaker 2: guess what the next one's going to be. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: I mean, the Holidays bring on an abundance of traditions, right,

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Speaker 2: I mean we have the Christian Nativity, we have Santa Claus,

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Speaker 2: we have other things like Crampus, we have Marley's Ghost,

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Speaker 2: we have the nineteen ninety sci fi action film I

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Speaker 2: Come in Peace, and of course we have The Nutcracker.

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Speaker 3: Ah Okay, here's the tie in.

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Speaker 2: So most of you are probably familiar with Tchaikovsky's ballet

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Speaker 2: The Nutcracker. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't

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Speaker 2: seen it many many times, This basically this is how

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Speaker 2: it plays out. The first half is a rather imaginative

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Speaker 2: tale of a Nutcracker prints coming to life and with

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Speaker 2: the help of a little girl, waging a battle against

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Speaker 2: an evil mouse king, culminating in a cool sword fight.

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Speaker 2: And then the rest of the ballet, which feels about

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Speaker 2: usually about like three or four hours long. It is

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Speaker 2: just a victory lap of dancing, just one dance after

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Speaker 2: the other, no more steaks, no more conflict, just dancing.

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Speaker 3: What do I remember about the Nutcracker. I remember like

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Speaker 3: a grandfather clock and like a sort of creepy, mysterious

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Speaker 3: grandfather figure. I remember a lady with a giant dress

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Speaker 3: that a bunch of children come out of. And I remember, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I guess the rat king.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or I guess it's specifically it's a mouse king,

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Speaker 2: but it's very closely tied. No pun intended with the

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Speaker 2: concept of the rat king now. The ballet was based

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Speaker 2: upon German romantic author Eta Hoffmann's eighteen sixteen short story

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Speaker 2: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, in which the titular

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Speaker 2: mouse king is described as follows is. This is from

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Speaker 2: the LRC translation. Marie was not afraid of mice, and

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Speaker 2: she could not help being amused by this sight. She

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Speaker 2: stood watching the mice come from all directions. When suddenly

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Speaker 2: there came a sharp and terrible piping noise, and seven

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Speaker 2: mouseheads with seven shining crowns upon them, rose through the floor,

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Speaker 2: and behind them wriggled a mouse's body, on which the

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Speaker 2: seven heads had all grown. Then the whole army of

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Speaker 2: mice shouted in full chorus and went trot, trot, right

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Speaker 2: up to the cupboard. In fact, to Marie, who was

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Speaker 2: standing beside.

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Speaker 3: It, wait a minute, I don't remember that this is

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Speaker 3: a single old mouse's body, but it's got seven mouse heads.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is commonly not depicted in performances of the ballet, okay,

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Speaker 2: though though sometimes it is. Sometimes ballets will decide to

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Speaker 2: get creative, get a little dark, and dive back into

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Speaker 2: these roots. But I have more passages to read here.

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Speaker 2: There's more of this. It's great, okay. Later on in

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Speaker 2: the text, Hoffman writes, But that moment two enemy marksmen

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Speaker 2: took hold of nutcrackers wooden cloak and held him fast,

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Speaker 2: squeaking in triumph from seven throats, the mouse king sprang

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Speaker 2: forward to take his kill. Whoa, oh, and get this one,

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Speaker 2: this one may be the best. She could only watch

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Speaker 2: as the mouse king squeezed himself out through a hole

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Speaker 2: in the wall. His fourteen eyes and seven crowns glistened

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Speaker 2: as he bounded through the room and made a huge

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Speaker 2: leap up to the top of Marie's nightstand.

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Speaker 3: Yikes, I'm getting flashes of Stephen King's cat's eye.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this is a creature of horror.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, less cute than I recall from the ballet. So

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Speaker 3: this is a monster creature that is a mouse with

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Speaker 3: seven heads on a single body.

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Speaker 2: That's right. And there are other descriptions in the text

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Speaker 2: that emphasize the horror of multiplicity into a mouse. Cumig

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Speaker 2: Now Hoffman, who of seventeen seventy six through eighteen twenty two,

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Speaker 2: was a dark romantic. One of his early novels, eighteen

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Speaker 2: fifteen's The Devil's Elixirs, concerns a doppelganger. He didn't originate

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Speaker 2: the term or the concept, but his work may have

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Speaker 2: helped popularize the concept. He is also well known for

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Speaker 2: his eighteen seventeen story The Sandman, which references a folkloric

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Speaker 2: entity and kind of a horror spin, and it also

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Speaker 2: features a female automaton. He's apparently noted for often employing

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Speaker 2: optical motifs, which include not only the doubling of one's

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Speaker 2: identity as with the Doppelganger, but also the multitude of

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Speaker 2: heads on the Mouse King. And I think he makes

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Speaker 2: use of other, like more uses of optical technology in

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Speaker 2: places as well, like telescopes and so forth.

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Speaker 3: You're saying optical motifs because like the doubling might be

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Speaker 3: like a kind of multiplicity of images you would see

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Speaker 3: through like a prism or some kind of thing a

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Speaker 3: lens or thing like that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like, for instance, in these passages from the

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Speaker 2: Nutcracker in the Mouse King, you get a sense of

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Speaker 2: like almost like that of a kaleidoscope. You know, there's

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Speaker 2: something just optically out of line with this thing that

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Speaker 2: is moving towards you the reader, or towards Marie, the

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Speaker 2: character I understand now. Of course, Hoffman would have been

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Speaker 2: acquainted with folklore, which we also see in is referencing

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Speaker 2: of the sandman. The sandman, of course, typically sprinkle sand

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Speaker 2: or dust upon a sleeper's eyes. I think we all

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Speaker 2: know that basic idea, but in Hoffman's work, the sandman

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Speaker 2: is said to steal the eyes of children who refuse

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Speaker 2: to go to bed. The sand he puts on their eyes,

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Speaker 2: causes their eyeballs to fall out, and then he collects

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Speaker 2: set eyeballs and takes them to the moon to feed

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Speaker 2: his children.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course Hoffman would have definitely been familiar

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Speaker 2: with the concept of the rat king, which seemingly plays

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Speaker 2: into his invention here as well. Now, I was looking

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Speaker 2: at a couple of sources, both by an author by

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Speaker 2: the name of David Blameyer's. One of them is Telling

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Speaker 2: Tales the Impact of Germany on English Children's Books seventeen

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Speaker 2: eighty through nineteen eighteen. This is a two thousand and

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Speaker 2: nine publication, and he points out that Hoffman's description of

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Speaker 2: the mouse king references both folkloric tales of multi headed

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Speaker 2: dragons as well as the dragon from the Book of Revelation.

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Speaker 2: Though to be clear, the author doesn't make any mention

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Speaker 2: of rat kings, as we'll be discussing them later as

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Speaker 2: an inspiration here.

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Speaker 3: Right, Okay, but you can clearly see how knowledge of

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Speaker 3: the biological or alleged biological entity the rat king would

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Speaker 3: would have or could have inspired the idea of a

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Speaker 3: mouse with seven heads.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now there's another example. This is sort of

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Speaker 2: folk little bit more, I guess specifically literature. There's another

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Speaker 2: work by the same author, the Folklore Tradition in Germany,

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Speaker 2: where he mentions a rat king by the name of

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Speaker 2: Berlibby that pops up in what long Reads author Adrian

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Speaker 2: Dobb describes as a kunsmachen quote an art fairy tale,

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Speaker 2: a narrative that a writer fashions to resemble something you

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Speaker 2: might hear from a farm hand at your father's estate. Okay, so,

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Speaker 2: according to Dobb, here again this excellent piece on Longreads,

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Speaker 2: I recommend it if you want some more rat king action.

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Speaker 2: Here he points out that the rat king in this

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Speaker 2: work is described as as a king of all rodents.

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Speaker 2: He's like a literal ruler of the rodent world, but

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Speaker 2: is singular in body and in head, though it is

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Speaker 2: implied that his tale is nodded with that of his wife,

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Speaker 2: the rat queen. Aw that's sweet, I guess kind of sweet.

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Speaker 2: It was this particular work. In this particular creation, Berlibby

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Speaker 2: was the creation of Ernst mounts Aren't, who lives seventeen

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Speaker 2: sixty nine through eighteen sixty a German nationalist, historian, writer

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Speaker 2: and poet who, in this tale seems to have been

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Speaker 2: largely commenting on the Rise of Napoleon, critiquing the idea

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Speaker 2: that some might want to rise above their station within

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Speaker 2: their own nation via the interference of a foreign power.

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Speaker 2: And this, according to dob was two years after Hoffman's tale.

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Speaker 2: I don't know that there's any indication that like Hoffman's

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Speaker 2: tale inspired this one. I think it's more probably the

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Speaker 2: idea that the rat king was like a general concept

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Speaker 2: already that was established. And we see two different authors

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Speaker 2: exploring things with the idea, but for different purposes.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay. So even in these slightly altered or just

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Speaker 3: different forms, we see that the idea of the rat

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Speaker 3: king is often used to symbolize something. It means something

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Speaker 3: about religious life or politic life, for morality.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Doab, writing about the example in Arnt's work, writes, quote,

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Speaker 2: the rat king appears like an almost perfect parody of

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Speaker 2: the community building ambitions that dominated German public life during

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Speaker 2: and following the Napoleonic Wars. So he says, you know,

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Speaker 2: the community building we're talking about here, This would have

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Speaker 2: been things like community singing, community storytelling, various community minded

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Speaker 2: efforts that were present in the culture of the time period.

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Speaker 2: And the mouse king is presented perhaps as the unpleasant

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Speaker 2: underbelly of social cohesion. Quote, the rat represented the dark

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Speaker 2: side of community, the dark side of dependency, the dark

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Speaker 2: side of proximity.

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Speaker 3: Tied so closely to one another that you, in the end,

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Speaker 3: are all doomed, doomed to a common fate.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and so all of this would have been

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Speaker 2: during a century in which Germany was transitioning from a

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Speaker 2: largely rural society to a largely urban one. But of

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Speaker 2: course these literary treatments did not invent the concept. Rather, again,

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Speaker 2: they find imaginative and or metaphorical uses of something that

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Speaker 2: was already present in the public mindset. So what could

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Speaker 2: that be? What could they have possibly been commenting on

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Speaker 2: what had been seen, what had been witnessed, what was alive,

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Speaker 2: and the zeitgeist of the time.

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Speaker 3: Right, So I guess this brings us to the question

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Speaker 3: many listeners probably already know the basic idea, but what

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Speaker 3: is a rat king? In the common modern understanding, it

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Speaker 3: is a group of rats who are joined at the tail,

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Speaker 3: usually described or represented with the tails entangled in a

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Speaker 3: huge not ball, and going all the way back to

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Speaker 3: the sixteenth century, there have been dozens of documented accounts

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Speaker 3: of rats discovered in this state, multiple rats three or

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Speaker 3: more joined by the tail, sometimes hiding underneath floorboards, inside walls,

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Speaker 3: protruding from earth and burrows, often with the rats still alive,

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Speaker 3: arranged like the spokes of a wheel. And there are

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Speaker 3: also physical specimens of alleged rat kings preserved and photographed

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Speaker 3: with their tails entwined in this way, though of course,

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Speaker 3: in these cases the rats are generally already dead, so

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Speaker 3: it can be hard to rule out hoaxes in the

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Speaker 3: case of like a rat king that's actually kept in

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Speaker 3: a museum somewhere that we'll have some educated commentary on

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Speaker 3: the plausibility of hoaxes versus natural origin later on.

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Speaker 2: I will say that you can certainly do some image

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Speaker 2: searches and see some rat kings or alleged rat kings,

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Speaker 2: but these are not pleasant images to look at. Like

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Speaker 2: a lot of like monstrous curiosities or alleged curiosities of

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Speaker 2: the natural world or even the unnatural world, are interesting

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Speaker 2: to look at or cool looking. The rat king not

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Speaker 2: so much. I feel like it kind of seems to

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Speaker 2: catch on as an idea more so than it is

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Speaker 2: an actual symbol. Like I don't know, there are a

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Speaker 2: lot of say, bands that use the rat king as

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Speaker 2: their logo or anything of that nature.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even consider that, but I bet there

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Speaker 3: are some.

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Speaker 2: I bet there are some, but they're probably kind of

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Speaker 2: going for something outrageous and gross.

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Speaker 3: So we wanted to look at the question what are

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Speaker 3: these masses of mutually doomed rodents? Are they something that

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Speaker 3: actually forms in nature or merely a legendary cryptid that

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Speaker 3: inspired some taxidermy hoaxes, And if they do occur in nature,

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Speaker 3: why and how So, first of all, I want to

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Speaker 3: mention a major source that I'm going to be using

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Speaker 3: in this exploration, one of the best things I came across,

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Speaker 3: which is a book called Rats by an author named

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Speaker 3: Martin Hart, published by Alison and Busby, originally published in

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Speaker 3: Dutch in nineteen seventy three, but with an English translation

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Speaker 3: by Arnold Pomeranz in nineteen eighty two. And this book

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Speaker 3: has an entire chapter devoted to ratkings and is just

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Speaker 3: generally an excellent resource on this topic. So to get

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Speaker 3: a flavor of what an encounter in the wild with

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Speaker 3: a rat king looks like, I'm going to share an

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Speaker 3: account from the beginning of Heart's chapter. So the setting

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Speaker 3: is a cold day in February nineteen sixty three, and

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Speaker 3: this is actually the most recent discovery of a rat

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Speaker 3: king that Hart recounts in his book, though there have

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Speaker 3: been other ones since then. This took place at a

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Speaker 3: farm in the Dutch town of Rukfenn. A farmer named

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Speaker 3: Peeve van Ninatten was out in his yard and he

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Speaker 3: noticed a squealing sound coming from the direction of the barn.

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Speaker 3: So the farmer followed the squealing to its source, and

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Speaker 3: when he got to it, he noticed a black rat

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Speaker 3: peering out from under a heap of bean poles. The

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Speaker 3: farmer killed the rat, but then when he tried to

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Speaker 3: pull it out from under the poles, it wouldn't budge.

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Speaker 3: It was stuck to something, and further uncovering revealed that

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Speaker 3: the rat he had killed was somehow tied by the

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Speaker 3: tail to six other He killed the other rats as well,

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Speaker 3: and then was left with this wheel of rats, consisting

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Speaker 3: of seven apparently well fed adults, two males and five females.

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Speaker 3: They were of the species Rattus ratus, the black rat.

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Speaker 3: They were not brown rats or the species Ratus norwegicus,

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Speaker 3: which was a bit strange because they were found in

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Speaker 3: the barn and chicken coop area of the farm, which

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Speaker 3: according to the farmer, was normally inhabited by brown rats

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Speaker 3: and not black rats, though the farmer knew that he

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Speaker 3: had black rats living in the loft of his house

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Speaker 3: some distance away. On closer examination of the tail knot,

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Speaker 3: most of the rats were tied only by the tips

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Speaker 3: of their tails, though one rat had basically its entire

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Speaker 3: tail tangled up. The knot also contained external material, like

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Speaker 3: some straw. The flesh of the tails appeared compressed where

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Speaker 3: it had been tied against the others, and an X

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Speaker 3: ray revealed that there were some bone fractures in the

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Speaker 3: tails and in the rats of their vertebrae. Examination indicated

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Speaker 3: that the tails appear to have been joined like this

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Speaker 3: for a while, which is a little perplexing because the

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Speaker 3: rats did appear to have eaten well like they didn't

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Speaker 3: appear emaciated and rob I've attached some pictures for you

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Speaker 3: to look at of the rat king of Rukfinn. Here's

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Speaker 3: the whole rat king with the seven individuals, and then

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Speaker 3: there's a close up of the tail not. It does

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Speaker 3: look very grizzly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Worth noting, of course that rats tails are

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Speaker 2: I belief, semi prehensile. But you can imagine in a

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Speaker 2: situation like this, if they were to come intertwined and

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Speaker 2: certainly broken, there'd be very little that rats could do

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Speaker 2: to free themselves.

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Speaker 3: That's right. There are some accounts of people witnessing or

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Speaker 3: claiming to witness a rat here or there breaking out

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Speaker 3: of the tangle, like actually getting out, either by detaching

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Speaker 3: like part of its tail coming off, injuring itself to escape,

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Speaker 3: or managing to untangle and get out, but this seems rare.

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Speaker 3: Mostly the rats appear stuck this way, and to summarize

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Speaker 3: a large later section of Hearts chapter, a lot of

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Speaker 3: the accounts of rat king discoveries from history take basically

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Speaker 3: the same form as the story I just told. Someone

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Speaker 3: is attracted to the sound of squealing, and then they

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Speaker 3: discover behind or underneath something a single rat, and then

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Speaker 3: they attack it, and then later discover that it is

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Speaker 3: joined to at least two others in extreme instances dozens

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Speaker 3: of others.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And in a lot of time, I've seen

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Speaker 2: multiple accounts where it's something you know it's taking place at,

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Speaker 2: say a barn or perhaps an urban environment. I guess

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Speaker 2: you could you could point out that these would be

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Speaker 2: you know, human spaces, human places. Rats, of course, their

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Speaker 2: populations growing in the very places where human populations grow

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Speaker 2: and living alongside us in the shadows.

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Speaker 3: I think that is significant, and let's come back to

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Speaker 3: that when we talk about the conclusions of a paper.

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Speaker 3: I'm going to get to later. So another section of

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Speaker 3: Heart's chapter here is an interesting diversion on the origin

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Speaker 3: of the name rat king. It is a kind of

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Speaker 3: weird thing to call a collection of rats tied together

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Speaker 3: by the tail, Like, what is especially kingly about this?

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Speaker 2: Right? Right? I mean, a king, by its very nature,

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Speaker 2: is an individual ruling over the mini We tend not

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Speaker 2: to think of a king as being a composite of

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Speaker 2: multiples exactly.

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Speaker 3: But the way Heart lays it out, I think you

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Speaker 3: can kind of see the way the meaning applied to

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Speaker 3: this term has sort of crept and morphed over time.

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Speaker 3: So according to Heart, the term rat king is a

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Speaker 3: direct translation of the medieval German ratten konig, though in

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Speaker 3: this usage it originally had nothing to do with tail notts.

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Speaker 3: It meant quote one who lives well on the backs

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Speaker 3: of others. So you can think of a sort of

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Speaker 3: opulent parasite, or in a way one might argue any king,

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Speaker 3: somebody who you know, lives off the labor of others.

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Speaker 3: They live well, they're you know, they're they're well fed.

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Speaker 3: They get all the luxury they desire with other people

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Speaker 3: doing the work. And that sort of social human association

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Speaker 3: with the term rat king is explained somewhat by its

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Speaker 3: usage in the sixteenth century text by an author named

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Speaker 3: Conrad Gessner called Historia Animalium. From what I can tell,

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Speaker 3: this seems to be a kind of a kind of

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Speaker 3: great source document of like cryptozoologists, they love looking back

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Speaker 3: to Conrad Gessner's entries in this But the point Gessner

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Speaker 3: makes in this book, as summarized by Heart, is quote,

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Speaker 3: some would have it that the rat wax is mighty

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Speaker 3: in its old age and is fed by its young.

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Speaker 3: This is what's called the rat king. Okay. So the

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Speaker 3: idea is that like some rats get like old and

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Speaker 3: venerable as rats go, and then the other rats will

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Speaker 3: start to serve it as a king. They'll bring it food,

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Speaker 3: they'll bring it little baubles and like pieces of velvet

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Speaker 3: or luxury items. You know, they're coming to serve their

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Speaker 3: rat king. So that rat king is living well by

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Speaker 3: doing nothing off of the labor of the other rats

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Speaker 3: in its nest.

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Speaker 2: Of course, you could easily tell the same fanciful story

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Speaker 2: and point out that, hey, rats look after their elders,

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Speaker 2: how honorable.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could exactly say that. Though to be clear,

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Speaker 3: in featuring this story, I do not mean to endorse

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Speaker 3: the idea that there's biological evidence for this. This seems

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Speaker 3: to be more like a you know, an early modern

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Speaker 3: story about how rats work, not anything that's backed up

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Speaker 3: by research. Another early usage of the term rat king,

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Speaker 3: though apparently having nothing to do with the the you know,

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Speaker 3: the the wheel of rats tied together by the tail,

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Speaker 3: is a quote from the founder of the protest Reformation,

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Speaker 3: Martin Luther, in a passage attacking the Catholic Church. Luther says, quote,

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Speaker 3: the archbishops have a primate above them. The primate's a patriarch,

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Speaker 3: and finally there is the pope, the king of the rats,

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Speaker 3: right at the top.

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Speaker 2: Kind of kind of complicated here we have primates and rats.

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Speaker 3: Well, the primate's that's like a position in the Catholic Church.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay, sorry, I'm just picturing an actual primate. So

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Speaker 2: he's like Martin Luther is talking about apes, he's talking

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Speaker 2: about rats. He might be if flinging something at a devil.

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Speaker 2: He's just sesus going wild.

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Speaker 3: That usage of primate can be confusing and has confused

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Speaker 3: me in the past. Yeah, but no, he's just talking

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Speaker 3: about like the positions and like, yeah, the worst one

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Speaker 3: who's like sort of the the evil king at the

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Speaker 3: top of this institution that Luther hated, that's the rat

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Speaker 3: king the pope, And that Luther quote would have been

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Speaker 3: sixteenth century as well. Heart writes that after this, the

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Speaker 3: term ratten Koenig came to refer to a king rat

364
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Speaker 3: who sat on a throne made of knotted tails. So

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Speaker 3: this seems like there's some morphing now where you're getting

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Speaker 3: halfway to the rat king idea we have today. And

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Speaker 3: I guess in this formulation, if I'm picturing it picturing

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Speaker 3: it right, it's not just that there are multiple rats

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Speaker 3: with their tails nodded, but there's a king rat riding

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Speaker 3: that knot of tails like a palanquin or a litter.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's like sitting upon the throne of tails.

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Speaker 2: I'm a little hazy on where I saw this, but

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Speaker 2: there was an old bit. I think Robert Sniegel had

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Speaker 2: something to do with this, the comedian behind Triumph the

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Speaker 2: insult comic dog. But oh ok, there was the sketch.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps listeners can can write in about where I'm remembering

377
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Speaker 2: this from, But the sketch was always the same. Here's

378
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Speaker 2: a snake and it has a sizeable lump in its body.

379
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Speaker 2: It's like an anaconda or something, and you have to

380
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Speaker 2: guess what the lump is based on the shape of it,

381
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Speaker 2: and so looking at the snake, the lump appears to

382
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Speaker 2: be an old woman in a rocking chair. And then

383
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:03,640
Speaker 2: they reveal, after everyone's had a chance to guess, they

384
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Speaker 2: reveal what the contents of the rat stomach happens to be,

385
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Speaker 2: and it is a pile of dead rats in the

386
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Speaker 2: shape of a woman in a rocking share. That's good.

387
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Speaker 3: But to come back to this image, it is a

388
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Speaker 3: striking image, though Hart says it is not known where

389
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Speaker 3: this idea first came from. But okay, so that's like

390
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Speaker 3: a rat king on a throne of knotted tales. You

391
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Speaker 3: take away the king and then what you've got left

392
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Speaker 3: is just rats with nodded tales. And according to Hart,

393
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Speaker 3: the first source to visually depict a rat king in

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Speaker 3: any form, and this is I think, in the form

395
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Speaker 3: that we now understand it as just a group of

396
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Speaker 3: rats with nodded tales. The first publication to contain this

397
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Speaker 3: was an addition of a sixteenth century book called the

398
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Speaker 3: Emblemata by a Hungarian author named Johannes Sambucus or I

399
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Speaker 3: think in his original language, Janosh Samboki. And this was

400
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Speaker 3: an emblem book, which was a genre of literature that

401
00:23:03,800 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 3: used to be quite popular, which would be essentially a

402
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:13,720
Speaker 3: catalog of allegorical illustrations or images. So in one common format,

403
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:17,639
Speaker 3: each page of this book would have a picture like

404
00:23:17,680 --> 00:23:20,160
Speaker 3: a drawing that has some weird stuff going on in it,

405
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:23,919
Speaker 3: and then a Latin motto, and then some text, often poetry,

406
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 3: explaining or interpreting the image. So for a modern example

407
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 3: that people can understand, I'm just making this up, imagine

408
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:35,880
Speaker 3: a book that's got a page that has an illustration

409
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 3: of Lady Justice blindfolding blindfolded holding a sword in scales

410
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Speaker 3: and a Latin motto that means to give everyone their due.

411
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Speaker 3: Then there would be some text describing what the image

412
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 3: means and that the scales mean the weighing of the evidence,

413
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 3: and the blindfold means impartiality and so forth. In the

414
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:58,200
Speaker 3: case of the Raking in the Emblemata by Johanna Sambucus,

415
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Speaker 3: the book picks a scene with seven rats in a street,

416
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Speaker 3: tied together by the tail, though none of them appears

417
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 3: to be particularly elevated or king like. It just looks

418
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 3: like seven common rats tied together, And in fact, they

419
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 3: don't even look like rats. They look more like a

420
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Speaker 3: cross between ferrets and wiener dogs. And there is a

421
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:20,959
Speaker 3: man looming over all of them, raising a baton, presumably

422
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Speaker 3: to beat them to death.

423
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Speaker 2: But then there's another man raising a baton or something

424
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Speaker 2: that's facing away from them, Like, yeah, I guess it

425
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Speaker 2: almost like he's leading them, or maybe he's saying, hey,

426
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Speaker 2: come beat these rats.

427
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Speaker 3: I don't know that's a good point. I don't understand

428
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Speaker 3: what the other guy's doing. Yeah, his backs to them.

429
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 3: He almost looks like they're both raising the sticks, and

430
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 3: this other guy looks like he's gonna like whack a

431
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 3: big flower bush with it. I don't know. M I've

432
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:49,879
Speaker 3: got more on this page in a second, but I

433
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 3: just briefly did want to say that in early symbolic usage.

434
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 3: The idea of rats tied together by the tails seems

435
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 3: to be symbolically loaded significant to people. The image meant

436
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 3: something about the structures or causes that bound people inextricably

437
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 3: to one another. Now in the Emblemata, Johanna Simbucus explains

438
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 3: that there's like a poem underneath the illustration, saying that

439
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 3: there was once a man who was plagued by rats

440
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 3: for many years, and then one day a servant came

441
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 3: across a group of seven rats stuck together by the tail. Now,

442
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 3: at this point Hart didn't say anything else about the emblemata,

443
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 3: but I got really interested. I wanted to know what

444
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,439
Speaker 3: the book said about this illustration, so I did some

445
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 3: real digging. I found a full scan and transcription of

446
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 3: the Latin text of the Emblemata. I have no idea

447
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 3: what most of the text in this book is about,

448
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 3: but searching through the pages I found some really good

449
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 3: pictures I just wanted to share with you. Rob One

450
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,639
Speaker 3: is like a guy who's going out to I think,

451
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 3: pick some berries off of a bush, but he looks

452
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 3: like Exeter from this island Earth, and there's some storm

453
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:01,960
Speaker 3: clouds in the background. Another one is I don't even

454
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 3: know how to describe this. There's like a giant baby

455
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 3: holding up these horns underneath his arms, but they're also

456
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 3: kind of snakes and they've got fruit coming out of them,

457
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 3: and he has a giant, I don't know, thread spool

458
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 3: on his head, and then there's some other guys looking

459
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 3: at him, like get a load of this guy. A

460
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 3: lot of the images in this book have the energy

461
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,040
Speaker 3: of like my bird is better than your bird, or

462
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 3: this guy with a dog head is bothering my dog.

463
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:32,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like there's something going on, there's some sort

464
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 2: of drama or interaction, but it's all trapped in some

465
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:40,360
Speaker 2: sort of cryptic imagery.

466
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 3: There's one I really like of a guy who's got

467
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 3: like a fishing net and he's kneeling beside the water's

468
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 3: edge and he's like, yes, I'm going to touch this squid.

469
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:50,679
Speaker 3: There's like a dead looking squid in the water.

470
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the sheep are watching on kind of I

471
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:56,880
Speaker 2: guess with disapproval or approval. It depends if he's about

472
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 2: to grab that squid or if he's letting the squid go.

473
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,119
Speaker 2: It does remind me of something that came up in

474
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 2: a past episode, like different ideas about whether it is

475
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 2: right to eat squid or if they should not be eaten.

476
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 2: So maybe this concerns that, but it could concern various things.

477
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 3: I guess that may well be the subject matter. Another

478
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 3: one I liked is there's a dude in a very

479
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 3: wide brimmed hat approaching a man who appears to be sick,

480
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 3: laying on like a cot on the floor, and he's

481
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 3: coming at him with severed heads in each hand. Is like,

482
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:29,479
Speaker 3: which of these heads is yours?

483
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: Oh? This one is frightening.

484
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the rat king, Okay, I

485
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 3: found the page that it's on, and God helped me.

486
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 3: I tried to manually translate this passage from the Latin

487
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 3: via Google Translate, extremely rough results, somewhat funny. I'm sure

488
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 3: I'm doing a horrible job getting the meaning here, but

489
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 3: here's the best I could come up with. So the

490
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 3: motto at the top of this image says catput seditionis tolendum,

491
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 3: which means to remove the head of the rebellion. And

492
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 3: here's the translation that I was able to come up with.

493
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 3: It is not a fictional story that the shrew mice

494
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 3: harassed the patrons and dug up the house too much,

495
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 3: don't a safe battle that many had hid for years

496
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 3: being treated badly by the enemy. While the servant beholds

497
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 3: the seven hidden, their tails firmly tied. The lord tried

498
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 3: to torture all these with poison, but the labor was

499
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 3: long in vain. While the plan was slaughtering something behind

500
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,240
Speaker 3: the treachery, not a single one appeared from it. In

501
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 3: this way, also the connections of the wild animals. These

502
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 3: traps must first be removed, for peace is a result

503
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 3: of the gods. When the author of the evil is slain,

504
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 3: so the good flows. Now. Notice it's interesting that this

505
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 3: is the first visual depiction of a rat king in

506
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 3: the way we understand it. But it doesn't use the

507
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 3: term ratking or any equivalent term. It just says, you know,

508
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,080
Speaker 3: the rats and then shows them tied together this way

509
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 3: and explains that they're tied by the tail. As far

510
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 3: as interpreting this text, I'm fumbling in the dark because

511
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 3: you know, bad translation. But the moral allegory might be

512
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 3: something about how the conjoined rats cannot be defeated until

513
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 3: like the author of the evil is undone or the

514
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 3: thing from which the evil flows is undone, which maybe means,

515
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 3: I guess, could refer to a so called king of

516
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 3: these rats, though there doesn't appear to be one pictured,

517
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 3: or maybe it means just by Maybe it means like

518
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 3: the nodding of the tail is the author of the

519
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,840
Speaker 3: evil here, though in that case it would seem kind

520
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 3: of counterproductive to untie their tails if you wanted to

521
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 3: fight the rats. But honestly, I do not know. I

522
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 3: admit failure in discovering the meaning of this, because.

523
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 2: One of the things about alleged real life encounters with

524
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 2: rat kings is that their tangled tales make them significantly

525
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 2: easier to kill. Yeah, because that is almost always what

526
00:29:56,600 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 2: happens next, or has happened to some degree as they

527
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 2: are discovered.

528
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 3: That's yeah, exactly right. So there is an interesting thing

529
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 3: I uncovered by this translate exercise, which is the line

530
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 3: about how this is not a fictional story. That's the

531
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 3: first thing it says. And I guess this means that

532
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 3: it is supposed to refer to a specific sighting of

533
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 3: a real rat king known to the author, but it

534
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 3: doesn't specify who, where or when.

535
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 2: Hmm. You know. This also touches on something that I'll

536
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 2: mention in Tomorrow's Monster Fact episode. The tying of a

537
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 2: knot has been a part of human magic since prehistoric times.

538
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 2: We see it in some of the most ancient recorded rituals.

539
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 2: We see it in the magics of the ancient Egyptians,

540
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 2: for instance. It seems to be pretty common to tie

541
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 2: a knot is to bind something, and in the case

542
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 2: of the rat King, perhaps to transform something. There seems

543
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 2: to be something inherently magical about not.

544
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree, and that so maybe the knot

545
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 3: in the tails is the thing from which the evil

546
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 3: flows in this poem, I'm not sure.

547
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or it's the person who tied the knot, or

548
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 2: or you know, there's so many ways to interpret it.

549
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 2: You know, certainly when you get into these other treatments

550
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 2: as well, it's the not something that just occurs via proximity,

551
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 2: via overcrowding, via the complexities of urban living, or whatever

552
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 2: the you know, however one ends up interpreting it. I

553
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 2: also like how the image, the specific image kind of

554
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:25,720
Speaker 2: implies that the rats, all of them, are running away

555
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 2: from each other, like all of them have a totally

556
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 2: different idea about which direction they should go, almost kind

557
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 2: of a cartoonish situation. Where they all are trying to

558
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 2: solve the problem but cannot because they're not actually addressing

559
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: the problem at the root, their tails being tied.

560
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 3: To get interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Though, on the other hand,

561
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, sources from this period do

562
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 3: not really display any propensity for understanding the plight of

563
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 3: a rat from the rats perspective. They pretty much all

564
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 3: view rats as just like a disgusting evil that must

565
00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 3: be destroyed to understand.

566
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 2: I mean, that is essentially the case, and the tale

567
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 2: of the rat is the most disgusting part. I mean,

568
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 2: I know we probably have some rat fans out there.

569
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 2: We're not talking about your pet rats. We're talking about

570
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 2: rats encountered in the wilds of human habitats and agriculture

571
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 2: and cities and so forth.

572
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, these were people who part of their

573
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 3: daily life was battling rat infestation. But coming back to

574
00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 3: Heart's history here, so he describes a few other things

575
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 3: in the development of this idea of the rat king.

576
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 3: The term rat king in its modern usage, referring to

577
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 3: rats joined together by a knot of the tales, appeared

578
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 3: more and more in print after this. Hart mentions a

579
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 3: seventeen to fifty seven dictionary by Nol Gomel that included

580
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 3: the term rat king, defining it as a number of

581
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 3: rats joined together by their tails. There are also equivalent

582
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 3: terms in French which are usually thought to be related

583
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 3: to the German rat and koenig, though some have offered

584
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 3: competing etymologies there. But beyond the evidence of people using

585
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 3: the term and evincing knowledge of the concept going back

586
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 3: to the sixteenth century, there are also allegedly factual accounts

587
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 3: of rat king finds, so not just people saying, hey,

588
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 3: here's what a rat king is, but actual, like I

589
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 3: saw ratking there was one here at this time. So

590
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 3: Hart says that from fifteen sixty four to nineteen sixty

591
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 3: three he was able to turn up a total of

592
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 3: fifty seven accounts of distinct rat kings, though he says

593
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 3: that some of these cases are clearly deliberate forgeries or

594
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 3: otherwise less than fully authentic, so this certainly doesn't mean

595
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 3: fifty seven instances where yes, there was a real rat

596
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 3: king the fifty seven claims, with some subset of those

597
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 3: being seemingly credible. The majority of the accounts come from Germany.

598
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 3: To name a few early ones, there was a rat

599
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 3: king of Donzig allegedly made of nine rats found alive

600
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 3: in sixteen twelve in the loft of a house. Mentioned

601
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 3: in a letter from a professor to a colleague, there

602
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 3: was a rat king of Strasbourg consisting of six live rats,

603
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 3: which was reported and depicted in illustration in the French

604
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 3: gazette mercur Galant in sixteen eighty three. Apparently some of

605
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 3: these reports came with helpful explanations, for example, the knowledge

606
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 3: that God sends ratkings to mankind to remind us of

607
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 3: our wickedness, and then like listing out the sins that

608
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 3: the rat king might be useful in calling to your attention,

609
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 3: Like remember when you did this? Yeah, here's a rat

610
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 3: king to remind you. And so heart goes on to

611
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 3: chronicle a bunch more of these fifty something odd accounts

612
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:57,439
Speaker 3: of people stumbling upon ratkings. I'm not gonna go into

613
00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 3: all these stories here because most of them have details

614
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 3: that are or at least in most cases where details

615
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 3: of the discovery are available, the details are pretty similar

616
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 3: to anecdotes we've already discussed, though often with additional just

617
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 3: sad grizzly details about the ways the rats were killed.

618
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:19,799
Speaker 3: Often involving boiling water people just like pour boiling water

619
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 3: into a hole that they thought rats were in, and

620
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 3: then also religious explication of the various finds relating to

621
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,919
Speaker 3: sin or deliverance from evil. Some of these rat kings

622
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 3: were preserved, often pickled in alcohol, and a few can

623
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:35,760
Speaker 3: actually still be seen in museum collections today.

624
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 2: And we're still finding rat kings apparently or allegedly. There

625
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 2: was one as recently as twenty twenty one in Estonia,

626
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 2: as reported by the rat King Desk at the Daily Mail,

627
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 2: of course, allegedly found in a chicken coop. There was

628
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 2: a I've got a paper about that one late, you've

629
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 2: got a story, okay, good pocus one. Yeah. So they

630
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 2: are still allegedly occurring, and the details of their discs

631
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 2: are still basically the same as they've always been.

632
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,720
Speaker 3: Now this brings us back to the question of where

633
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 3: do these things come from? Are these really things that

634
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 3: occur in nature? Does this just happen to rats sometimes?

635
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 3: Or are these hoaxes? Are these like the Jenny Hannovers

636
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 3: that people would make out of the remains of rays

637
00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 3: and sea animals? Is this like the Fiji Mermaid? Some

638
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 3: investigators have claimed that all rat kings are artificial, practical jokes.

639
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 3: They're all just like people taking dead rats and tying

640
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,759
Speaker 3: the tails together. Heart However, after his investigation does not

641
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 3: agree with this, he does think that rat kings occur

642
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 3: naturally and are not all hoaxes, though obviously some of

643
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 3: the ones that have been attested are hoaxes, and we'll

644
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 3: come back to arguments for that. But one argument in

645
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 3: favor of this is something that really is kind of

646
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 3: sad to relate but does inform our knowledge on this,

647
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 3: which is experimental rat kings. Hart said he would not

648
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 3: reproduce these experiments because he considers them cruel and unethical,

649
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 3: but he recounts attempts by a couple of other researchers

650
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 3: to create rat kings in the lab. And I'm not

651
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 3: going to describe the experiments in detail, but the gist

652
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 3: of the findings is that, first of all, if you

653
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 3: tie up the tails of already dead rats, they do

654
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:26,479
Speaker 3: not look like the tail knots of allegedly natural rat kings.

655
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 3: So you just compare the rat kings that are preserved

656
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 3: or people have taken pictures of with like you take

657
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 3: dead rats and tie their tails together. It doesn't look

658
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 3: the same. Apparently, they need to be alive when their

659
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 3: tails are joined together in order to create the rat

660
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 3: king knot ball. However, these rat king experiments did find

661
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 3: that if you anesthetize rats, put them to sleep, and

662
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:54,279
Speaker 3: then glue their tail tips together, then you allow them

663
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 3: to wake up and run around and do their thing

664
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 3: for a period of time, their tails end up tang

665
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 3: in a ball that does pretty much exactly resemble the

666
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 3: tails of ratkings.

667
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,839
Speaker 2: So kind of the difference to some extent between being

668
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,720
Speaker 2: given the assignment of hey, go get your computer cable,

669
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 2: go get your mouse cable, and just go ahead and

670
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 2: tangle all that up, versus just leave it alone in

671
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 2: your backpack for a while. See what happens, you know,

672
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 2: and you know, maybe just tug at it loosely. You know.

673
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 2: It's like you're going to have a different sort of

674
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 2: not than the one that you might intentionally tie.

675
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 3: That's right. And in these these experiments, once the glue

676
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 3: was removed after the rat king tail knot had been

677
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 3: created by live rats, mostly the tails stayed stuck together.

678
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 3: They had become tangled enough that they could not get

679
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,320
Speaker 3: free even though the glue was dissolved again.

680
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 2: Horrifying that this was someone's choice in experimentation. There's like, well,

681
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 2: we've got to We've got to create these rat kings

682
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 2: in order to fully test this. Like, it doesn't seem

683
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,160
Speaker 2: like this was necessary. It's nice to have this information,

684
00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 2: I guess, but it was certainly not ethically created.

685
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, our heart discusses these experiments with what feels like

686
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,960
Speaker 3: some degree of scorn, and again he says he won't

687
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:17,839
Speaker 3: reproduce them to check the results for himself. But if

688
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 3: these results are in fact accurate, this does give us

689
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 3: some information that we can use. It does make it

690
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 3: seem like ratkings could be created in nature if rats

691
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 3: tales were somehow initially stuck together while the rats were

692
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 3: still alive. And Heart goes on to offer another argument

693
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 3: in favor of the idea of rat kings being a

694
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 3: real natural phenomenon, which is that, with one exception, all

695
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 3: discovered rat kings are of one species, the black ratus ratus,

696
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:53,880
Speaker 3: in places where rats of other species exist, So you

697
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 3: might have brown rats and black rats occupying the same farm,

698
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 3: but if you find a rat king, it's all ways

699
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:04,200
Speaker 3: the black rat. So if they were all hoaxes, why

700
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 3: wouldn't people be equally making them out of brown rats.

701
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 2: That's a good point.

702
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 3: And the black rat, of course has a longer and

703
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 3: more flexible tail than the brown rat, which seems again

704
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 3: like it would make a lot of sense that it

705
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 3: could become more likely entangled under the right or wrong circumstances. Also,

706
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 3: there are examples of so called kings being observed in

707
00:40:27,719 --> 00:40:31,280
Speaker 3: other animals, for example, squirrel kings that have been reported.

708
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 3: One example of this was in a zoo in South

709
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 3: Carolina in nineteen fifty one. Now, there have been a

710
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 3: number of hypotheses offered throughout history to explain rat kings

711
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,919
Speaker 3: if they are natural phenomena. One idea is that they're

712
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:49,959
Speaker 3: simply born that way. Heart does not think that's very likely,

713
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:53,680
Speaker 3: because they're born with shorter tails, the tails grow longer

714
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 3: over the course of the lifespan, and also it's hard

715
00:40:57,200 --> 00:40:59,720
Speaker 3: to imagine how the you know, the rats would survive

716
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 3: and so well until they get older with their tails

717
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 3: all tied together in that way. Another idea is that

718
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 3: the tails might entwine as part of a fear response

719
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 3: as rats huddle together, maybe when they're terrified by something,

720
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,120
Speaker 3: they have a reaction that causes their tails to entwine

721
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:20,720
Speaker 3: and then they get tangled and stuck together. Another example.

722
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:25,800
Speaker 3: Another hypothesis is the idea of rats huddling for warmth

723
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 3: and somehow allowing their tail tips to become frozen or

724
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 3: stuck together by a substance, perhaps frozen urine or some

725
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 3: other kind of liquid that freezes the tails together, or

726
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 3: a sticky substance that sticks the tails together, and then

727
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:47,400
Speaker 3: being initially stuck together by that external adhesive material or

728
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 3: frozen material, they could entwine them crawling around, as we

729
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 3: saw in one of those experiments, crawling around and creating

730
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 3: a natural knot just with their own activity and movement.

731
00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 3: But I mentioned I was going to get to an

732
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 3: actual scientific paper about rat kings, and I want to

733
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 3: talk about that now. So this one was published in

734
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 3: the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Biology and

735
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 3: Ecology in two thousand and seven by Andre Miluton, called

736
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:17,319
Speaker 3: rat Kings in Estonia. I looked up the author of

737
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 3: this paper and he's a zoologist and curator at the

738
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 3: University of Tartu National History Museum in Estonia. So the

739
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 3: author begins this paper by looking at the literary record

740
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 3: of evidence for the rat king and he cites Heart

741
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 3: actually is a major resource, and notes that at the

742
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 3: time of this paper in two thousand and seven, there

743
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 3: was still significant question over whether rat kings are ever

744
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 3: created naturally, or they are they all hoaxes, and if

745
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:47,720
Speaker 3: they are created naturally, what the cause is. By Miluton's count,

746
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 3: as of the year two thousand and five, there were

747
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,839
Speaker 3: fifty eight reliable accounts of rat kings, six of which

748
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 3: were physically preserved in some way, and across these accounts,

749
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 3: the number of animals joined within a ratki varies from

750
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,879
Speaker 3: three to thirty two. The greatest number of rat king

751
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 3: claims come from Germany, followed by France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium,

752
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 3: and then finally one account from Indonesia, and with one exception,

753
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 3: all of the rat kings the author was able to

754
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,240
Speaker 3: study rat king accounts the author was able to study

755
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 3: consisted of a single species, again, Ratus ratus, the black rat.

756
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 3: The one rat species exception is the report from Indonesia,

757
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 3: which was allegedly made of the species Ratus argent tivanter,

758
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 3: which is commonly known as the rice Field rat mill

759
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:41,080
Speaker 3: Youuton also acknowledges, as Heart did, that outside of rats,

760
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,760
Speaker 3: there are a few claimed observations of similar quote kings

761
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 3: made of animals like mice and squirrels, but the vast

762
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:52,800
Speaker 3: majority of alleged rodent kings are agglomerations, specifically of Ratus ratus,

763
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:56,239
Speaker 3: the black rat. But the recent discovery of a rat

764
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 3: king at Saaru, which is a small village in Estonia

765
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 3: in Ja Nanuary two thousand and five, seems to have

766
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 3: prompted this new investigation, and the author believes this rat

767
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 3: king may shed some light on how these masses of

768
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 3: creatures are formed. Warning, of course, about this story there

769
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 3: will be some moderately gruesome details about rat corpses and

770
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 3: rat injuries to read from the author's report about this

771
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 3: Estonian incident.

772
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 2: Quote.

773
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 3: On sixteen January two thousand and five, farmer Ray and

774
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 3: Kuieve discovered a huddle of squeaking rats on the sandy

775
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 3: floor of his shed in Saru Village, mon East Parish,

776
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 3: Voru County, Estonia. The animals were unable to escape and

777
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 3: the farmer's son killed them with a stick. After that,

778
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 3: a cluster of sixteen rats were excavated from the frozen sand.

779
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 3: Their tails were tangled in a knot that contained frozen sand.

780
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 3: At the time of discovery, only about nine of the

781
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:55,280
Speaker 3: rats were alive. Obviously, the animals tried to dig themselves

782
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 3: out of the narrow tunnel, and the first rats buried

783
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 3: the last ones under the sand. The crater in the

784
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 3: sandy floor could still be seen even two months later.

785
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 2: I do want to note that the article that I

786
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:11,040
Speaker 2: referred to earlier about an Estonian rat king is actually

787
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:16,760
Speaker 2: from years later. Oh, but the same individual is commenting

788
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:18,960
Speaker 2: on it. This is so it's no uton in both cases.

789
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 3: Okay, so there was another Estonian rat king after this,

790
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 3: I see. Yeah, well, so to pick up on this story,

791
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 3: So the farmer had no idea what he was looking

792
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 3: at here, didn't know anything about rat king legends or

793
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 3: so he says, but no reason to doubt him really,

794
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 3: but he thought it was weird. So he put this

795
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 3: tangle of rats out on a pile of planks so

796
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: the neighbors could come by and gawk at it. And

797
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 3: then about two months later, a relative of the farmer's wife,

798
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 3: who was a journalist, was like, Hey, what's up with this?

799
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 3: You know, maybe you should contact some experts. So this

800
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:56,839
Speaker 3: relative god in contact with some zoologists to see if

801
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 3: the find was significant, and this led to a bunch

802
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:04,400
Speaker 3: of reports in local media and investigation in Estonian academic journals.

803
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 3: On March tenth of that year, the rat King was

804
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 3: taken to the Natural History Museum at the University of Tartu,

805
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,919
Speaker 3: where it was submerged in alcohol for preservation and put

806
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 3: on display. And it consisted of thirteen adult black rats,

807
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 3: seven males and six females. There were originally sixteen, but

808
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 3: one was removed and discarded by the farmer, and then

809
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 3: two more were removed by a scavenger. The paper says

810
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 3: probably a pole cat this, I guess. Seemingly, while the

811
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 3: rat king was, you know, on neighborhood display on the

812
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 3: pile of planks.

813
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 2: It is kind of humorous that his first inclination was like, Wow,

814
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:43,800
Speaker 2: I better put this out on the plank for the

815
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 2: neighbors to see, when, of course, we have these other

816
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,239
Speaker 2: traditions and interpretations of the rat king as like a

817
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 2: dire omen or as a punishment from God. But you know,

818
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 2: as he said, he wasn't really familiar with any of

819
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 2: these traditions. He's just like, it's kind of neat. I

820
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 2: guess I'll put it out on the plank.

821
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a low key spirit of curiosity. I appreciate it. So,

822
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 3: of the two rats that were scavenged taken away by

823
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 3: some kind of predator or animal, one of the tails

824
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,279
Speaker 3: remained attached to the knot. So I guess by the

825
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 3: time the museum got the rat king there were thirteen rats,

826
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 3: but fourteen tails left. The remaining thirteen bodies have undergone

827
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 3: various types of damage and decay. Two of the rats

828
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 3: had their brains eaten by what No speculation here in

829
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 3: the paper. It just says brains eaten. Another one seems

830
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:42,719
Speaker 3: to have had its hind legs nod on, and as

831
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 3: the rat king dried out, the knot appears to have loosened.

832
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 3: So at the museum during examination, some of the rats

833
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,759
Speaker 3: separated from the rest. But if you look at the

834
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 3: flesh in the parts of the tail that were trapped

835
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 3: in the knot, that flesh is highly compressed. So the

836
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 3: author concludes that the tail knot was originally very tight

837
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 3: when the animals were alive, and the flesh was higher

838
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 3: pressure in it. I guess the rat was more hydrated.

839
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,360
Speaker 3: The author compares this to two other rat king reports

840
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 3: from Estonia, both of which lack physical evidence. One the

841
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,239
Speaker 3: so called rat King of Tartu, which allegedly consisted of

842
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 3: three rats and was found sometime around nineteen fifteen to

843
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:27,439
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty. The other was found in a place called

844
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 3: Roika in the early seventies in the winter time, made

845
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 3: of eighteen black rats. So coming to the conclusions the

846
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 3: author draws from this examination and after reviewing the literature

847
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:44,320
Speaker 3: and the others from history, including hearts observations, he's raising

848
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 3: the question how are these things made? A few options.

849
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 3: Number one, it's a hoax. These are artificially manufactured by people.

850
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 3: Number two, the knot is created naturally by chance due

851
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 3: to tail movements. Sometimes maybe you know, the rats are

852
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 3: around each other, so they end up with their tails nodded.

853
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,719
Speaker 3: This could be related to the idea that rats become frightened,

854
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:09,440
Speaker 3: you know, like heart rays. They become frightened in their

855
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 3: tails in twine. And then the third option is the

856
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:15,799
Speaker 3: knot is created naturally when tails are stuck together by

857
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:20,160
Speaker 3: some external binding process, such as by gluing or freezing.

858
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 3: And after examining the Saru Village rat king, the author

859
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 3: suggests that this probably is a natural phenomenon, giving several

860
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:32,240
Speaker 3: reasons for doubting it. Was created artificially. First of all,

861
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:35,359
Speaker 3: by all accounts, none of the family of farmers who

862
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 3: found it had ever heard of rat kings, and they

863
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 3: receive no tangible benefits for their find except I guess

864
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 3: maybe the attention of neighbors who came by to see

865
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 3: the thing. And this doesn't rule it out, but it

866
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:51,080
Speaker 3: does make it seem less likely. The next one is

867
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 3: a good point, as was raised by Heart. It's impossible

868
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 3: to tie the tails of living rats in a knot

869
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 3: without anesthesia, and it is not plausible that this kind

870
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 3: of rat anesthetic surgical procedure was carried out on a

871
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 3: rural farm. It's also not plausible that anesthesia was used

872
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 3: to create so many of these attested rat kings from

873
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:17,760
Speaker 3: long ago. Also, remember about how the rats they dried

874
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 3: out and the tail knot became loose. The author points

875
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 3: out that the finder made no attempt to tighten the

876
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 3: knot of the dried tails, which you might imagine someone

877
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 3: would do if they were trying to carry out a hoax.

878
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 3: You know, they might try to tighten it make it

879
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:31,440
Speaker 3: look better.

880
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 2: Because they would have initially tightened the tails of perhaps

881
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:37,360
Speaker 2: dead rats, and then would have needed to do so

882
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 2: again to make sure that they're fined was still presentable.

883
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 3: Right, So the author does not think it's very likely

884
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 3: these rats were tied together artificially. Now, coming to that

885
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 3: second hypothesis, did the rats simply get their tails wrapped

886
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 3: around one another until a knot formed? Under this hypothesis,

887
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 3: rats that are nervous will attempt to wrap their tails

888
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 3: around one another, and maybe this happens in hillaot forms.

889
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 3: The rat king at Tsaru, though, was discovered partially in

890
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:07,760
Speaker 3: its burrow, where there's no reason to think the rats

891
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:11,239
Speaker 3: would be especially nervous. And the story of the rat

892
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 3: king at Roika was found inside a wall, also a

893
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:17,720
Speaker 3: sheltered place. And then the author in fact it doubts

894
00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 3: this could even happen in principle. He writes, quote, I've

895
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:24,520
Speaker 3: kept wild black rats in captivity for about eight years.

896
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:28,200
Speaker 3: Over this period, hundreds of animals were disturbed by people

897
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 3: every day during the cleaning of cages, feeding, catching, or

898
00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 3: observing the animals. But an entangling of tails has never

899
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 3: been observed. So Miluton is saying, I don't even think

900
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:42,879
Speaker 3: this happens. Much less would be the explanation of how

901
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,759
Speaker 3: the tails end up knotted in a ball. But then

902
00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 3: coming to the last hypothesis about the external binding process,

903
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 3: Miliuton writes, quote, according to the third hypothesis for the

904
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 3: formation of a rat king, rats should first huddle together,

905
00:51:57,600 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 3: as they usually do when sleeping in the nest chain,

906
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:04,760
Speaker 3: especially when it is cold. If their tails become glued

907
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:08,320
Speaker 3: or frozen together, animals try to free themselves by moving

908
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 3: in different directions. These chaotic movements may result in their

909
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 3: tails becoming entangled in a tight knot. Even after removal

910
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,879
Speaker 3: of the initial cause sticky substance or ice, they are

911
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 3: no longer able to escape from the knot. The sticky

912
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 3: substance may be blood, food items, nesting material, et cetera.

913
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 3: And I would add to that that Heart mentioned the

914
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 3: possibility of just frozen urine.

915
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,840
Speaker 2: It's about to say, must we add to this list,

916
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:39,719
Speaker 2: but I guess we should for science now.

917
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:43,480
Speaker 3: Milywton argues that this last hypothesis about the freezing or

918
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:46,839
Speaker 3: sticking together and then that leading to the knot is

919
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 3: the best explanation for the rat kings found in Estonia.

920
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:52,520
Speaker 3: Reasons for this argument. First of all, rat kings in

921
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:56,320
Speaker 3: question appear to have formed within the shelter, not outside

922
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:58,919
Speaker 3: of it. So you know places where they would huddle

923
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,839
Speaker 3: together for warmth. In stories of rat kings in which

924
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:04,520
Speaker 3: details about the weather are known, it tended to be

925
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 3: frosty weather. In fact, the rat king of Saru was

926
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:10,839
Speaker 3: found right after the village had experienced sub zero temperatures.

927
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:15,760
Speaker 3: Adding to this, apart from the story attributed to Indonesia,

928
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 3: basically all the stories of rat king sightings are traceable

929
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 3: to colder climates, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where

930
00:53:22,520 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 3: there are two things, cold winters and Rattus ratus. Ratus

931
00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 3: ratus is more common in southern Europe, where the winters

932
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 3: are more temperate, and in northern Europe. In Canada, where

933
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 3: the winters are colder, the brown rat Ratus norvegicus is

934
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 3: the more common species. So rat kings have and again

935
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:43,239
Speaker 3: to emphasize what I said earlier, rat kings have really

936
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 3: not been reported In the brown rat. They have shorter,

937
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:50,439
Speaker 3: thicker and less flexible tails. So the author argues that

938
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 3: rat kings are in fact to genuine natural phenomena, though

939
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 3: of course sometimes they may be created by people, especially

940
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 3: out of already dead rats. They occur within the nest

941
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 3: of the black rat during cold weather via the gluing

942
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:09,400
Speaker 3: freezing process described earlier, and finally says, most of the

943
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 3: time we will never find out about them.

944
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:12,440
Speaker 2: Quote.

945
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 3: Not all rat kings that arise are found by people,

946
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:18,399
Speaker 3: and not all finds are reflected in the press, much

947
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 3: less in scientific papers.

948
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:23,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an idea that I saw discussed in

949
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 2: some other works as well, like, not every rat king

950
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 2: that could assuming that rat kings do occur naturally, not

951
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 2: everyone that occurs naturally is going to turn up because

952
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 2: there are even though there are accounts of them seeming

953
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 2: to be well fed, and these tend to be you know,

954
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 2: the ones that have been found, and they've been found

955
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 2: in say agricultural or urban environments where there's perhaps an

956
00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 2: abundance of food. For the most part, they're doomed. They're

957
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:51,879
Speaker 2: going to die, and in many cases they would die

958
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:54,360
Speaker 2: without humans ever laying eyes on them. And then you

959
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 2: may have other cases where they're not reported. You know,

960
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 2: perhaps they it is seen as a dire omen you

961
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:02,080
Speaker 2: better cover this up. I'm not going to put this

962
00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 2: on a plank for the neighbors to see. But I

963
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 2: kept coming back, and I guess we've partially answered this,

964
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 2: But I was thinking, well, okay, if all we need

965
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:15,880
Speaker 2: are black rats, cold weather, and the presence of human

966
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 2: agriculture and or urbanization. Then why do we not have

967
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 2: accounts of them from before around fifteen seventy six, Like,

968
00:55:25,600 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 2: certainly observations of a rat king would be novel, and

969
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,319
Speaker 2: it makes sense that you would maybe hear about them,

970
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 2: say during the Roman period. But maybe indeed it does

971
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 2: have to do with it just not being like the

972
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:42,879
Speaker 2: perfect combination of all these forces like again, cold weather,

973
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 2: black rats, human agriculture, urbanization, Like you have to have

974
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,480
Speaker 2: everything clicking along just right, and then there's still going

975
00:55:50,560 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 2: to be a rare occurrence.

976
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:53,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, that all sounds right to me, though, I think

977
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 3: it is actually a good question you raise. Yeah, why

978
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 3: do these accounts first pop up in the sixteenth century,

979
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 3: especially when the term rat king with a different meaning

980
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 3: was already in common parlance.

981
00:56:07,239 --> 00:56:11,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting, And again, knots have always been of interest

982
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 2: to human beings, and rats have been with us a

983
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 2: long time as well, you know, often seen in a

984
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:24,280
Speaker 2: more ominous light, but also sometimes celebrated for various aspects

985
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 2: of the organism. So it again, it's the kind of

986
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,359
Speaker 2: thing that, if observed, would surely be novel enough to

987
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 2: bear repetition in the written record, which of course is

988
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 2: inherently incomplete, so we have to acknowledge that as well.

989
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I would say where I sit with this

990
00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 3: is I think Heart and Miluton make good arguments, and

991
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:45,960
Speaker 3: I would say, if I if I had to guess

992
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 3: one way or another, I would agree with them that

993
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:53,360
Speaker 3: rat kings probably are naturally created, probably along the methods

994
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 3: that the Miluton highlights. But on the other hand, I

995
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 3: would admit that questions still remain and there are some

996
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 3: reasons to be skeptical.

997
00:57:00,680 --> 00:57:02,760
Speaker 2: Now, I want to come back briefly to rat kings

998
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 2: and pop culture, sort of get some of the realistic

999
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 2: horror perhaps off the palette. Here we've touched on a

1000
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 2: couple of the major examples of rat kings and pop culture,

1001
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:16,640
Speaker 2: at least the major one as far as the modern

1002
00:57:16,680 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 2: audiences are concerned, but a couple of other ones that

1003
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 2: I thought are worth mentioning. The idea of a rat king,

1004
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:30,080
Speaker 2: particularly as possessing a collective intelligence, is one that has

1005
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 2: fascinated me for a while. This idea originates, as far

1006
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:36,480
Speaker 2: as I'm aware, in the pages of the British comic

1007
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:39,320
Speaker 2: two thousand and a d specifically in the Adventures of

1008
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 2: Halo Jones. These were written by the legendary comics author

1009
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 2: Alan Moore and illustrated by the legendary comics artist Ian Gibson,

1010
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 2: who sadly passed away earlier this week. One of the greats.

1011
00:57:51,720 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 2: But in Halo Jones, the rat King is displayed as

1012
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 2: using its advanced intelligence to control all the rats the

1013
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 2: world and then take over the world in the process.

1014
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:06,720
Speaker 2: I included an illustration from the comic book Here for

1015
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 2: You Joe in black and white.

1016
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 3: Is it typing on a computer?

1017
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 2: I believe so. Yeah, these are mass communicating rat kings

1018
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:14,520
Speaker 2: right here.

1019
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 3: You never know when you're talking to somebody on the internet.

1020
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:19,600
Speaker 3: They could be a rat king. It could have no way,

1021
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 3: It absolutely could be. Now related, but separate concept is

1022
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 3: that of the cranium rats and dungeons and dragons. These

1023
00:58:28,160 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 3: are psionically enhanced rats. So these are rats that the

1024
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 3: e Lithids or the mind flares have toyed with and

1025
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 3: they've changed their brains in order to use them as

1026
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 3: spies to go out and especially into like the human

1027
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 3: world and see what's up. But the thing I always

1028
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:45,320
Speaker 3: liked about cranium rats is the idea that one of

1029
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:48,680
Speaker 3: these is essentially just a rat. You encounter one cranium rat,

1030
00:58:48,720 --> 00:58:51,439
Speaker 3: you're just encountering a rat. But if you have two

1031
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:55,440
Speaker 3: cranium rats, well they have the collective intelligence, the psionically

1032
00:58:55,520 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 3: connected brain of two rats together, and it builds from there.

1033
00:58:59,120 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 3: So in great number, cranium rats have a vast collective intelligence.

1034
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 3: And in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, they have

1035
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 3: enhanced psionic abilities, so they'd be able to like basically

1036
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 3: like lash out at you with scanner powers. WHOA, So

1037
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 3: you really don't want to let them get on the

1038
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:17,520
Speaker 3: computer less Like Cameron Vail, they hack into your main

1039
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:21,280
Speaker 3: mainframe via scanner powers through the phone lines.

1040
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another frequently cited use of rat kings in pop culture.

1041
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:32,320
Speaker 2: I believe Liz Lemon's old boyfriend Dennis Duffy on Thirty

1042
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,040
Speaker 2: Rock claims in one episode to have seen a rat king,

1043
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 2: perhaps in the subway or what have you. That one

1044
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 2: definitely stuck in my mind. But I'd forgotten about this one.

1045
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 2: It's been a long time since I've read Stephen King's

1046
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six novel It, but there is mention of

1047
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 2: a rat king and its vast pages. I had to

1048
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 2: look it up to see exactly what is said. But

1049
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 2: on page eight hundred and seventy two of the kindle edition,

1050
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:01,920
Speaker 2: you have the kids boring the Nyebolt House. This is

1051
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 2: the the Haunted House. If you've seen the movie, you

1052
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,760
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about, the dark, decayed house that

1053
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:11,080
Speaker 2: they go to, and Richie opens up a cupboard, looks inside,

1054
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 2: and then reports what he has seen. He says, quote,

1055
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:16,720
Speaker 2: there's hundreds of them in there. Their tails, they were

1056
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:20,280
Speaker 2: all tangled up, bill knotted together like snakes.

1057
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 3: Creepy. So page eight seventy two is that near the

1058
01:00:24,480 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 3: end of chapter one.

1059
01:00:26,160 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 2: Yes, I have a physical copy around here somewhere, but

1060
01:00:29,920 --> 01:00:31,720
Speaker 2: there's no way I was going to like scan through

1061
01:00:31,760 --> 01:00:33,680
Speaker 2: it and find one mention of a rat king. So

1062
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 2: I had to pony up by the kindle edition do

1063
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 2: a word search and find out exactly where King mentions

1064
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:42,680
Speaker 2: rat kings because there's a lot of horror, plenty of

1065
01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 2: horror in that book to go around. Oh yeah, so

1066
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,120
Speaker 2: that's just a taste of some uses of the rat

1067
01:00:47,200 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 2: king in pop culture. But there are others. So if

1068
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 2: there are any that are near and dear to your heart,

1069
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:53,840
Speaker 2: do you think are particularly insightful write in we would

1070
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Do not send us your

1071
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:58,600
Speaker 2: rat kings, though. If you find a rat king, please

1072
01:00:58,640 --> 01:01:03,920
Speaker 2: find an acceptable authority to report this. All right, we're

1073
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:06,320
Speaker 2: going to go ahead and close this episode out again

1074
01:01:06,440 --> 01:01:08,640
Speaker 2: look to the Monster Fact tomorrow from a little more

1075
01:01:08,640 --> 01:01:13,240
Speaker 2: from me regarding rat king esque matters. But then we'll

1076
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Speaker 2: be back on Thursday with an episode on you Guessed

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Speaker 2: It The Nutcracker.

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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

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Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 3: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.