Are there such things at Rat Kings?

Answer 1

The theory is that rat kings come into being because of very tight living conditions, and it's when baby rats get stuck together at their tails, usually by blood and filth and feces. Eventually, through squirming to get loose, they get so knotted together that the vertebrae in their tails break and when the bones heal, the rats are more or less permanently knotted together.

Because rats are usually solitary creatures (not to mention the difficulty of such a collection of rats surviving to adulthood), this is mostly considered a myth, though there have been sightings of Rat Kings as recently as 1963. (Probably more recent, but 1963 was the one I remember hearing about, as that was one of the only times the specimen was alive, rather than rat skeletons fused together to fool onlookers.) None of the sightings have been confirmed, however, as it's possible that this is something that was done to the rats for notoriety or monetary gain.

So...probably not, but more likely than some of the other urban myths I've heard.

Answer 2

I saw a picture of one in the Rough Guide to unusual phenomena...whatever it was called. I guess it was real. It looked real.

The Rough Guide said that the Rat Kings were only composed of black rats, which have gone almost extinct since brown rats moved in all over the world. But good for us, because the black rats were the ones who spread the Black Death, and now the bubonic plague is only in a few remote areas.

Hard to rule when your tail is knotted to a bunch of other rats. I'm not sure what the "king" part signifies.

Answer 3

In the play the Nut Cracker

Answer 4

No not ever