WEBVTT - The Rat King 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:15.880 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:16.599 is Robert. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:20.079 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And on today's episode 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:21.959 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we are going to 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:26.240 be talking about the Wonderful, the Glorious rat King, which, 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.400 believe it or not, this is a Christmas episode, isn't it, Rob? 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.639 That's right? This is one of a pair of Christmas 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.880 Core episodes we're busting out this week. You can probably 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:37.960 guess what the next one's going to be. But yeah, 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.239 I mean, the Holidays bring on an abundance of traditions, right, 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.400 I mean we have the Christian Nativity, we have Santa Claus, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.600 we have other things like Crampus, we have Marley's Ghost, 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:50.000 we have the nineteen ninety sci fi action film I 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.480 Come in Peace, and of course we have The Nutcracker. 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:55.400 Ah Okay, here's the tie in. 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.800 So most of you are probably familiar with Tchaikovsky's ballet 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:06.360 The Nutcracker. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:10.600 seen it many many times, This basically this is how 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.920 it plays out. The first half is a rather imaginative 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.480 tale of a Nutcracker prints coming to life and with 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.480 the help of a little girl, waging a battle against 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.240 an evil mouse king, culminating in a cool sword fight. 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.639 And then the rest of the ballet, which feels about 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:30.720 usually about like three or four hours long. It is 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.280 just a victory lap of dancing, just one dance after 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.360 the other, no more steaks, no more conflict, just dancing. 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.840 What do I remember about the Nutcracker. I remember like 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:46.120 a grandfather clock and like a sort of creepy, mysterious 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.600 grandfather figure. I remember a lady with a giant dress 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.600 that a bunch of children come out of. And I remember, yeah, 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:55.639 I guess the rat king. 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.200 Yeah, yeah, or I guess it's specifically it's a mouse king, 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.840 but it's very closely tied. No pun intended with the 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:08.320 concept of the rat king now. The ballet was based 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:13.840 upon German romantic author Eta Hoffmann's eighteen sixteen short story 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:17.240 The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, in which the titular 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.440 mouse king is described as follows is. This is from 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:26.480 the LRC translation. Marie was not afraid of mice, and 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:29.360 she could not help being amused by this sight. She 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.840 stood watching the mice come from all directions. When suddenly 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.480 there came a sharp and terrible piping noise, and seven 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:41.160 mouseheads with seven shining crowns upon them, rose through the floor, 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.520 and behind them wriggled a mouse's body, on which the 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.240 seven heads had all grown. Then the whole army of 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:53.280 mice shouted in full chorus and went trot, trot, right 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:55.960 up to the cupboard. In fact, to Marie, who was 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:57.280 standing beside. 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.480 It, wait a minute, I don't remember that this is 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.760 a single old mouse's body, but it's got seven mouse heads. 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:10.280 Yes, this is commonly not depicted in performances of the ballet, okay, 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.280 though though sometimes it is. Sometimes ballets will decide to 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.959 get creative, get a little dark, and dive back into 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.760 these roots. But I have more passages to read here. 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.760 There's more of this. It's great, okay. Later on in 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:26.600 the text, Hoffman writes, But that moment two enemy marksmen 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.880 took hold of nutcrackers wooden cloak and held him fast, 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.000 squeaking in triumph from seven throats, the mouse king sprang 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:38.200 forward to take his kill. Whoa, oh, and get this one, 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.120 this one may be the best. She could only watch 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.080 as the mouse king squeezed himself out through a hole 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.200 in the wall. His fourteen eyes and seven crowns glistened 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.880 as he bounded through the room and made a huge 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.880 leap up to the top of Marie's nightstand. 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.920 Yikes, I'm getting flashes of Stephen King's cat's eye. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:02.040 Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this is a creature of horror. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.080 Yeah, less cute than I recall from the ballet. So 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:09.320 this is a monster creature that is a mouse with 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.160 seven heads on a single body. 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.680 That's right. And there are other descriptions in the text 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.840 that emphasize the horror of multiplicity into a mouse. Cumig 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.680 Now Hoffman, who of seventeen seventy six through eighteen twenty two, 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.480 was a dark romantic. One of his early novels, eighteen 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:30.560 fifteen's The Devil's Elixirs, concerns a doppelganger. He didn't originate 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:32.960 the term or the concept, but his work may have 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.479 helped popularize the concept. He is also well known for 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:41.120 his eighteen seventeen story The Sandman, which references a folkloric 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.320 entity and kind of a horror spin, and it also 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:49.680 features a female automaton. He's apparently noted for often employing 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.040 optical motifs, which include not only the doubling of one's 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.359 identity as with the Doppelganger, but also the multitude of 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:58.520 heads on the Mouse King. And I think he makes 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.279 use of other, like more uses of optical technology in 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:04.799 places as well, like telescopes and so forth. 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:09.360 You're saying optical motifs because like the doubling might be 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:12.599 like a kind of multiplicity of images you would see 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.480 through like a prism or some kind of thing a 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:16.720 lens or thing like that. 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.360 Yeah. Yeah, Like, for instance, in these passages from the 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.320 Nutcracker in the Mouse King, you get a sense of 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:27.120 like almost like that of a kaleidoscope. You know, there's 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.400 something just optically out of line with this thing that 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.240 is moving towards you the reader, or towards Marie, the 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.920 character I understand now. Of course, Hoffman would have been 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.960 acquainted with folklore, which we also see in is referencing 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.560 of the sandman. The sandman, of course, typically sprinkle sand 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:45.680 or dust upon a sleeper's eyes. I think we all 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.719 know that basic idea, but in Hoffman's work, the sandman 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.360 is said to steal the eyes of children who refuse 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.360 to go to bed. The sand he puts on their eyes, 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.200 causes their eyeballs to fall out, and then he collects 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:00.680 set eyeballs and takes them to the moon to feed 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:01.320 his children. 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:02.200 Wow. 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:05.680 Yeah, And of course Hoffman would have definitely been familiar 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.560 with the concept of the rat king, which seemingly plays 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.560 into his invention here as well. Now, I was looking 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.120 at a couple of sources, both by an author by 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:18.119 the name of David Blameyer's. One of them is Telling 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.440 Tales the Impact of Germany on English Children's Books seventeen 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.400 eighty through nineteen eighteen. This is a two thousand and 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:28.120 nine publication, and he points out that Hoffman's description of 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.919 the mouse king references both folkloric tales of multi headed 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.880 dragons as well as the dragon from the Book of Revelation. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.280 Though to be clear, the author doesn't make any mention 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:42.000 of rat kings, as we'll be discussing them later as 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:43.440 an inspiration here. 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.560 Right, Okay, but you can clearly see how knowledge of 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:52.400 the biological or alleged biological entity the rat king would 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:55.080 would have or could have inspired the idea of a 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:56.240 mouse with seven heads. 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:02.080 Yeah. Yeah, Now there's another example. This is sort of 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.839 folk little bit more, I guess specifically literature. There's another 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.760 work by the same author, the Folklore Tradition in Germany, 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.800 where he mentions a rat king by the name of 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.760 Berlibby that pops up in what long Reads author Adrian 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:20.200 Dobb describes as a kunsmachen quote an art fairy tale, 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.360 a narrative that a writer fashions to resemble something you 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:28.480 might hear from a farm hand at your father's estate. Okay, so, 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:33.520 according to Dobb, here again this excellent piece on Longreads, 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.400 I recommend it if you want some more rat king action. 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:39.240 Here he points out that the rat king in this 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.480 work is described as as a king of all rodents. 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.000 He's like a literal ruler of the rodent world, but 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.880 is singular in body and in head, though it is 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.240 implied that his tale is nodded with that of his wife, 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:56.960 the rat queen. Aw that's sweet, I guess kind of sweet. 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:03.280 It was this particular work. In this particular creation, Berlibby 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:08.040 was the creation of Ernst mounts Aren't, who lives seventeen 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:11.520 sixty nine through eighteen sixty a German nationalist, historian, writer 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.480 and poet who, in this tale seems to have been 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:18.520 largely commenting on the Rise of Napoleon, critiquing the idea 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.520 that some might want to rise above their station within 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.240 their own nation via the interference of a foreign power. 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:31.040 And this, according to dob was two years after Hoffman's tale. 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.040 I don't know that there's any indication that like Hoffman's 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.240 tale inspired this one. I think it's more probably the 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.000 idea that the rat king was like a general concept 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.080 already that was established. And we see two different authors 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.040 exploring things with the idea, but for different purposes. 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.120 Oh okay. So even in these slightly altered or just 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.600 different forms, we see that the idea of the rat 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:57.920 king is often used to symbolize something. It means something 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:02.400 about religious life or politic life, for morality. 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:08.120 That's right. Doab, writing about the example in Arnt's work, writes, quote, 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.640 the rat king appears like an almost perfect parody of 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:16.160 the community building ambitions that dominated German public life during 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:20.120 and following the Napoleonic Wars. So he says, you know, 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:23.559 the community building we're talking about here, This would have 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.680 been things like community singing, community storytelling, various community minded 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.160 efforts that were present in the culture of the time period. 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.520 And the mouse king is presented perhaps as the unpleasant 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.040 underbelly of social cohesion. Quote, the rat represented the dark 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.559 side of community, the dark side of dependency, the dark 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.400 side of proximity. 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:47.600 Tied so closely to one another that you, in the end, 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:49.880 are all doomed, doomed to a common fate. 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.480 Yes, yeah, and so all of this would have been 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.720 during a century in which Germany was transitioning from a 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.720 largely rural society to a largely urban one. But of 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.320 course these literary treatments did not invent the concept. Rather, again, 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:07.839 they find imaginative and or metaphorical uses of something that 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:12.840 was already present in the public mindset. So what could 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.680 that be? What could they have possibly been commenting on 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.200 what had been seen, what had been witnessed, what was alive, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.920 and the zeitgeist of the time. 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:24.880 Right, So I guess this brings us to the question 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.280 many listeners probably already know the basic idea, but what 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:32.840 is a rat king? In the common modern understanding, it 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.320 is a group of rats who are joined at the tail, 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.880 usually described or represented with the tails entangled in a 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.240 huge not ball, and going all the way back to 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.960 the sixteenth century, there have been dozens of documented accounts 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:53.440 of rats discovered in this state, multiple rats three or 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:58.720 more joined by the tail, sometimes hiding underneath floorboards, inside walls, 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:03.280 protruding from earth and burrows, often with the rats still alive, 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.120 arranged like the spokes of a wheel. And there are 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.520 also physical specimens of alleged rat kings preserved and photographed 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.880 with their tails entwined in this way, though of course, 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.240 in these cases the rats are generally already dead, so 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.680 it can be hard to rule out hoaxes in the 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.080 case of like a rat king that's actually kept in 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.400 a museum somewhere that we'll have some educated commentary on 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:29.559 the plausibility of hoaxes versus natural origin later on. 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.640 I will say that you can certainly do some image 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.640 searches and see some rat kings or alleged rat kings, 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.040 but these are not pleasant images to look at. Like 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.640 a lot of like monstrous curiosities or alleged curiosities of 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.119 the natural world or even the unnatural world, are interesting 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.079 to look at or cool looking. The rat king not 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.320 so much. I feel like it kind of seems to 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.520 catch on as an idea more so than it is 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:00.040 an actual symbol. Like I don't know, there are a 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.520 lot of say, bands that use the rat king as 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:04.400 their logo or anything of that nature. 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:06.720 Oh, I didn't even consider that, but I bet there 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:07.160 are some. 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.520 I bet there are some, but they're probably kind of 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.000 going for something outrageous and gross. 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:16.600 So we wanted to look at the question what are 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:21.199 these masses of mutually doomed rodents? Are they something that 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:25.920 actually forms in nature or merely a legendary cryptid that 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.920 inspired some taxidermy hoaxes, And if they do occur in nature, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:33.360 why and how So, first of all, I want to 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.800 mention a major source that I'm going to be using 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.640 in this exploration, one of the best things I came across, 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.000 which is a book called Rats by an author named 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:46.120 Martin Hart, published by Alison and Busby, originally published in 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.839 Dutch in nineteen seventy three, but with an English translation 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.360 by Arnold Pomeranz in nineteen eighty two. And this book 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:57.320 has an entire chapter devoted to ratkings and is just 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.840 generally an excellent resource on this topic. So to get 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:03.920 a flavor of what an encounter in the wild with 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.880 a rat king looks like, I'm going to share an 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.480 account from the beginning of Heart's chapter. So the setting 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.960 is a cold day in February nineteen sixty three, and 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.240 this is actually the most recent discovery of a rat 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:20.280 king that Hart recounts in his book, though there have 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.600 been other ones since then. This took place at a 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.839 farm in the Dutch town of Rukfenn. A farmer named 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.640 Peeve van Ninatten was out in his yard and he 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.880 noticed a squealing sound coming from the direction of the barn. 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.400 So the farmer followed the squealing to its source, and 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.120 when he got to it, he noticed a black rat 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.040 peering out from under a heap of bean poles. The 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.600 farmer killed the rat, but then when he tried to 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:49.880 pull it out from under the poles, it wouldn't budge. 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.160 It was stuck to something, and further uncovering revealed that 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.840 the rat he had killed was somehow tied by the 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:02.440 tail to six other He killed the other rats as well, 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.920 and then was left with this wheel of rats, consisting 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:10.720 of seven apparently well fed adults, two males and five females. 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.800 They were of the species Rattus ratus, the black rat. 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:19.240 They were not brown rats or the species Ratus norwegicus, 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.240 which was a bit strange because they were found in 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.400 the barn and chicken coop area of the farm, which 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:29.120 according to the farmer, was normally inhabited by brown rats 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:31.360 and not black rats, though the farmer knew that he 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.120 had black rats living in the loft of his house 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.640 some distance away. On closer examination of the tail knot, 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:41.560 most of the rats were tied only by the tips 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.400 of their tails, though one rat had basically its entire 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:50.040 tail tangled up. The knot also contained external material, like 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:54.600 some straw. The flesh of the tails appeared compressed where 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.520 it had been tied against the others, and an X 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:01.000 ray revealed that there were some bone fractures in the 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:05.880 tails and in the rats of their vertebrae. Examination indicated 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.360 that the tails appear to have been joined like this 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.880 for a while, which is a little perplexing because the 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.280 rats did appear to have eaten well like they didn't 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:18.320 appear emaciated and rob I've attached some pictures for you 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.400 to look at of the rat king of Rukfinn. Here's 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.160 the whole rat king with the seven individuals, and then 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.520 there's a close up of the tail not. It does 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:28.000 look very grizzly. 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:31.520 Yeah yeah. Worth noting, of course that rats tails are 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.320 I belief, semi prehensile. But you can imagine in a 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:37.320 situation like this, if they were to come intertwined and 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.680 certainly broken, there'd be very little that rats could do 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:42.000 to free themselves. 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.120 That's right. There are some accounts of people witnessing or 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:50.360 claiming to witness a rat here or there breaking out 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:54.760 of the tangle, like actually getting out, either by detaching 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.840 like part of its tail coming off, injuring itself to escape, 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.200 or managing to untangle and get out, but this seems rare. 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.440 Mostly the rats appear stuck this way, and to summarize 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.880 a large later section of Hearts chapter, a lot of 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.000 the accounts of rat king discoveries from history take basically 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.280 the same form as the story I just told. Someone 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:18.120 is attracted to the sound of squealing, and then they 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:22.920 discover behind or underneath something a single rat, and then 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:25.520 they attack it, and then later discover that it is 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.240 joined to at least two others in extreme instances dozens 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:29.760 of others. 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.800 Yeah. Yeah, And in a lot of time, I've seen 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.360 multiple accounts where it's something you know it's taking place at, 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:42.240 say a barn or perhaps an urban environment. I guess 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:44.160 you could you could point out that these would be 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:51.200 you know, human spaces, human places. Rats, of course, their 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:55.480 populations growing in the very places where human populations grow 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:57.760 and living alongside us in the shadows. 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.400 I think that is significant, and let's come back to 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.280 that when we talk about the conclusions of a paper. 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:17.280 I'm going to get to later. So another section of 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:21.200 Heart's chapter here is an interesting diversion on the origin 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.720 of the name rat king. It is a kind of 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.200 weird thing to call a collection of rats tied together 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.480 by the tail, Like, what is especially kingly about this? 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.679 Right? Right? I mean, a king, by its very nature, 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.720 is an individual ruling over the mini We tend not 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.199 to think of a king as being a composite of 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:42.520 multiples exactly. 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:44.320 But the way Heart lays it out, I think you 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.120 can kind of see the way the meaning applied to 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.400 this term has sort of crept and morphed over time. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.239 So according to Heart, the term rat king is a 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:58.639 direct translation of the medieval German ratten konig, though in 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.800 this usage it originally had nothing to do with tail notts. 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.080 It meant quote one who lives well on the backs 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.240 of others. So you can think of a sort of 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:11.040 opulent parasite, or in a way one might argue any king, 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.000 somebody who you know, lives off the labor of others. 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.040 They live well, they're you know, they're they're well fed. 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.960 They get all the luxury they desire with other people 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:24.600 doing the work. And that sort of social human association 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.400 with the term rat king is explained somewhat by its 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.200 usage in the sixteenth century text by an author named 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.520 Conrad Gessner called Historia Animalium. From what I can tell, 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:37.840 this seems to be a kind of a kind of 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:42.200 great source document of like cryptozoologists, they love looking back 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:47.080 to Conrad Gessner's entries in this But the point Gessner 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.200 makes in this book, as summarized by Heart, is quote, 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.919 some would have it that the rat wax is mighty 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.320 in its old age and is fed by its young. 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.240 This is what's called the rat king. Okay. So the 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.399 idea is that like some rats get like old and 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:07.000 venerable as rats go, and then the other rats will 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:09.840 start to serve it as a king. They'll bring it food, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.560 they'll bring it little baubles and like pieces of velvet 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.320 or luxury items. You know, they're coming to serve their 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.040 rat king. So that rat king is living well by 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.919 doing nothing off of the labor of the other rats 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:24.680 in its nest. 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.720 Of course, you could easily tell the same fanciful story 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.480 and point out that, hey, rats look after their elders, 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:32.280 how honorable. 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.960 Yeah, yeah, you could exactly say that. Though to be clear, 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:38.160 in featuring this story, I do not mean to endorse 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.159 the idea that there's biological evidence for this. This seems 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.920 to be more like a you know, an early modern 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.280 story about how rats work, not anything that's backed up 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.480 by research. Another early usage of the term rat king, 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.439 though apparently having nothing to do with the the you know, 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.240 the the wheel of rats tied together by the tail, 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.680 is a quote from the founder of the protest Reformation, 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:05.679 Martin Luther, in a passage attacking the Catholic Church. Luther says, quote, 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:09.720 the archbishops have a primate above them. The primate's a patriarch, 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.080 and finally there is the pope, the king of the rats, 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:14.040 right at the top. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.200 Kind of kind of complicated here we have primates and rats. 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.840 Well, the primate's that's like a position in the Catholic Church. 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.159 Oh okay, sorry, I'm just picturing an actual primate. So 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.760 he's like Martin Luther is talking about apes, he's talking 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.959 about rats. He might be if flinging something at a devil. 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:36.439 He's just sesus going wild. 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.960 That usage of primate can be confusing and has confused 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.480 me in the past. Yeah, but no, he's just talking 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.080 about like the positions and like, yeah, the worst one 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.240 who's like sort of the the evil king at the 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.360 top of this institution that Luther hated, that's the rat 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:54.080 king the pope, And that Luther quote would have been 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.439 sixteenth century as well. Heart writes that after this, the 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.240 term ratten Koenig came to refer to a king rat 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:07.000 who sat on a throne made of knotted tails. So 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.840 this seems like there's some morphing now where you're getting 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.959 halfway to the rat king idea we have today. And 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.040 I guess in this formulation, if I'm picturing it picturing 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.159 it right, it's not just that there are multiple rats 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.840 with their tails nodded, but there's a king rat riding 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:26.680 that knot of tails like a palanquin or a litter. 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:29.800 You know, it's like sitting upon the throne of tails. 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:33.399 I'm a little hazy on where I saw this, but 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:35.480 there was an old bit. I think Robert Sniegel had 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:38.680 something to do with this, the comedian behind Triumph the 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.919 insult comic dog. But oh ok, there was the sketch. 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:44.840 Perhaps listeners can can write in about where I'm remembering 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.399 this from, But the sketch was always the same. Here's 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.040 a snake and it has a sizeable lump in its body. 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.760 It's like an anaconda or something, and you have to 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.280 guess what the lump is based on the shape of it, 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.199 and so looking at the snake, the lump appears to 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.000 be an old woman in a rocking chair. And then 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:03.640 they reveal, after everyone's had a chance to guess, they 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:05.919 reveal what the contents of the rat stomach happens to be, 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:08.879 and it is a pile of dead rats in the 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:13.720 shape of a woman in a rocking share. That's good. 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:16.240 But to come back to this image, it is a 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:18.920 striking image, though Hart says it is not known where 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.399 this idea first came from. But okay, so that's like 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:25.600 a rat king on a throne of knotted tales. You 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.399 take away the king and then what you've got left 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.160 is just rats with nodded tales. And according to Hart, 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.760 the first source to visually depict a rat king in 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.200 any form, and this is I think, in the form 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:41.159 that we now understand it as just a group of 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:45.560 rats with nodded tales. The first publication to contain this 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:50.120 was an addition of a sixteenth century book called the 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:55.560 Emblemata by a Hungarian author named Johannes Sambucus or I 0:22:55.600 --> 0:23:00.240 think in his original language, Janosh Samboki. And this was 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.679 an emblem book, which was a genre of literature that 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:07.320