(1) "The name rat king may come from the old superstition that an aged wise rat sat on the entangled tails of rats and was treated as royalty by the pack. But it could just as well derive from an early belief that the animals entangled were one organism, a supreme rat with many bodies. Rat kings range in composition from 3 - 32 rats, with most consisting of 5 - 10 animals, and are apparently found only among the long and less pliable tailed black rat species, although a few verified rodent kings of squirrels and several unverified mice kings have been reported. Brown rat kings have been induced in the laboratory. Rat kings fabricated by tying the tails of live rats together look nothing like real kings, but rat kings have been | created in the laboratory by gluing the tails of rats together; this causes the rats to become so entangled while trying to extricate themselves that a true knot is formed. Yet no zoologist has been able to prove exactly how rat kings are formed in nature. It is possible that the tails become entangled when the rats huddle together facing outward for warmth and security, urine and feces from those in the upper circle falling onto the entwined mass of tails. Other possibilities are that the tails might become entangled while the males are wildly fighting for females, or during mass grooming, or in the nest shortly after birth, or after the tails of a number of rats come into contact with some sticky substance. It may even be that the "verminous vermicelli" are formed in several ways. The rat king remains as much a mystery to nuclear-age scientists as it was to medieval peasants." (2)

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(1) Illustration from a book of tales by Franz Von Graf Pocci, 1846. Hans Biedermann notes in Dictionary of Symbolism, "In some western contexts rats are associated idiomatically with tangles or concatenations of misfortune or rumor (from the observation that baby rats in the nest, when sick, appear to get their tails entangled)..." Translated by James Hulbert. Penguin Books USA, New York, 1994; pp. 279 - 280.
(2) More Cunning than Man: a social history of rats and men; Robert Hendrickson; Dorset Press, New York; pp. 92 - 93.

Steve Lewis, 1997. /