The author of The Eastern Evil
Since the 16th century, the legend of the "Rat King" has appeared in the West. The rat king here is not a huge mouse, but a whole of many rats. And the way these rats make up the whole is very special, their tails are entangled with each other, forming a dead knot that is difficult to unravel. The rat king phenomenon occurred at a time of large-scale cholera in European countries, so this phenomenon is also considered a symptom of disaster.
According to Russian media reports, not long ago, a Russian Guarnolassurov uploaded a video of himself on social media, in which he found a very rare rat king in the melon field. According to Rassurov's description, he was preparing to irrigate the melon field, but found that there was a movement of melon leaves in one place, so he carefully opened the melon leaves, and found that there was a rat king composed of 5 rats under the melon leaves. They all wanted to struggle in their respective directions, and in the end no one could escape.
This is not the first time that humans have discovered the rat king phenomenon, it has happened many times in history, but the total number of times is still relatively small. So what rat king phenomenon has appeared in history? Why does the Rat King phenomenon occur?
Through the Internet search, we will find that the earliest record of the rat king is in 1564, when the plague occurred in many European countries, and the rat king appeared in one of the European countries, so this phenomenon was later rumored to be an "ominous omen". According to statistics, most of the rat kings were found in Germany, and the Altenburg Museum in Germany is still preserved in the world's largest specimen of the rat king.
It is understood that the specimen was discovered after a fire in a flour mill in Buheim, Germany, in 1828, and consisted of a total of 32 rats. The tails of the 32 rats are curled together, and each mouse's head is facing differently, which shows that they also experienced a process of continuous struggle before they died. As for why so many rats have their tails entangled and ended up in a dead knot, scientists say there is no definitive account of the problem.
In addition to Altenburg, museums in Hamburg, Hameln, Göttingen and other regions in Germany all contain specimens of rat kings preserved with alcohol, and the number of rats in these specimens varies, but they are all wound together in the same way, that is, the tails are tied to each other in a dead knot. In 1930, the Dunedin Otago Museum in New Zealand exhibited a specimen of a king rat that was confirmed to have been brought together by multiple rats affected by horsehair entanglements.
There is a theory that the rat king phenomenon is an unnatural phenomenon created by evil religions in the 16th century, and they regard this phenomenon as a manifestation of supernatural power, saying that the people who can create the rat king have supreme power. But the cult's propaganda did not last long before it was banned by European countries, and if it was found to spread speech or create a rat king, it would be immediately executed. However, the spread of cults penetrated the people very quickly, and even if the official came to block it, the Rat King was regarded as a symbol of disaster.
Specimens of the rat king have also appeared in Estonia, and a professor of zoology at the University of Tattu in the country has also studied this phenomenon and written a research paper. The paper notes that from all rat king cases, it is unlikely that they were artificially created, because it is not easy to hand intertwine the tails of 5 or more rats and then tie a dead knot, unless there is the help of medical agents, such as anesthetics.
But the scientist conducted in-depth research on multiple rat kings, denying the possibility that rats were injected with anesthetics, so he believed that if the rat king was artificial, then the person must achieve some substantial benefit, but no one in all the rat king cases got a substantial benefit from it. As for how the tails of multiple rats intertwined and tied a dead knot, the scientists have suggested multiple possibilities.
The first possibility is that the tail of the rat is contaminated with a sticky substance, which has a strong stickiness and quick-drying properties, causing the tails of the rats that touch each other to stick together and bind the rats. When the rat finds that its tail is pulled, it will continue to struggle, and in the process of struggling, the tail will become more and more circling, and finally it will tie a dead knot. The second possibility is purely accidental, a large number of rats have their tails intertwined, this probability is still there, but it is relatively small.
summary
I have to say that the rat king phenomenon sounds a little uncomfortable, after all, the rat itself is an uncomfortable animal, but various studies and investigations show that the rat king is naturally formed, not artificially created, so it can basically exclude the mysterious attributes and catastrophic attributes that people add to the rat king. If you want to analyze the reasons for the formation of rat kings in more depth, you may also need to further understand the group structure and group habits of rats.