http://www.panix.com/~sjl/wonder/lewis/ratking/rat_intro.htm
Then there's the famous Rattenkonig or "rat king". Young rats close to 
one another in the nest sometimes get their tails entangled and become a 
living Gordian knot glued together by dirt encrusted wounds and the like. 
When they try to pull apart the tails are pulled tight, and the knots 
strengthen, knitting the rats together. As many as 32 rats are trapped in 
these knots and have died as a result of being unable to forage for 
themselves.

"There is no doubt that rat kings exist: sixty or so have been reported 
in Europe since 1564 and about 40 (most of them found alive) have been 
authenticated , the latest in 1963. Rat kings have frequently been 
preserved, painted, and photographed, and in 1774 a 16-rat king was 
examined by a Leipzig court in connection with a charge that a miller's 
apprentice had cheated his master by stealing the king from him and 
pocketing a tidy sum by exhibiting it." *
* More Cunning than Man: a social history of rats and men; Robert 
  Hendrickson; Dorset Press, New York; pp. 92 - 93.

"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." *
* More Cunning than Man: a social history of rats and men; Robert 
  Hendrickson; Dorset Press, New York; pp. 92 - 93. 


http://binky.paragon.co.uk/paranormal-az/Para_R.html
 Reported for centuries but never satisfactorily explained, rat kings are 
groups of living rats whose tails have mysteriously become inextricably 
intertwined, thereby permanently binding the hapless creatures to one 
another. Perhaps the most astounding specimen was the hairless, 
desiccated example discovered in May 1828 at Buchheim, Germany, lodged 
inside a miller's chimney. Not surprisingly, in this particular instance 
the rats were dead -- all 32 of them. 

-----

A 'king of rats' (I believe the term is same in English) is a group of rats
whose tails grew entangled when they were babies. There can be up to 7 rats in
one such group, and they are of course unable to move or to take care of
themselves. I remember reading somewhere that the other rats in the community
feed them so that they don't die. But I saw a movie recently (Epidemics, Lars
von Triers 1987) where it was said that the group always dies of hunger, no
mention of help from other animals.


 The European Brown Rat (if I recall correctly from the Willy Ley article 
written, oh, back in the 1950's) was the one that formed Rat Kings. They 
formed due to a high population of rats crowded together, whose tails would 
get stuck together with urine (and possibly with frozen urine, if it were 
winter). These conglomerations would die of starvation. The idea of the Rat 
King being fed by others in the community was a story made up by 
anthropomorphizing humans (perhaps they would find a healthy Rat King, and 
ignore the several bodiless tails attached next to the fat rats).
 The Brown Rat has been almost everywhere supplanted by the Norwegian 
Rat, which doesn't have whatever strange interaction with tail skin and 
rat urine that would form the Kings. 

I think you mispelled black rat, Rattus Rattus, and that the
term brown rat generally refers to rattus norvegicus. That is
the way my dic. would have it. This is not my regular computer,
with the copies of my posts in the rat thread  I started, but
I haven't had time to forget. It's black or Norway[brown] rats.


