Soggy rodents tangle their tails in one big knot in horrifying 'rat king' video
When a Russian farmer's field flooded recently, he discovered an unexpected "royal" visitor among the puddles: a so-called rat king.
This grandiose term describes a group of rats whose tails become knotted together so that the rats can't free themselves — a rare (and horrific) phenomenon that has inspired myths and legends for centuries.
Alibulat Rasulov, a landowner in the Stavropol region in southwestern Russia, found one such rat king in his field. On Aug. 21, Rasulov shared two videos on Instagram that showed five small, bedraggled rats with their tails hopelessly tangled. ...
In the first video, which is just under 3 minutes long, Rasulov aims the camera at a flooded patch of land, where something is wriggling under the leaves at the edge of the water. He moves some vegetation to reveal two holes in the bank, which could be burrows dug by small animals. Near one of the holes is a cluster of five small, soaking wet rats with their knotted tails wrapped around a plant stem. Rasulov lifts them out of the water, removes the plant and places the rats on dry land, but though they scramble to escape, their tails remain firmly tied together.
The second video is less than 30 seconds long, but it reveals that this particular rat king's story has a happy ending. Rasulov's hand lifts and repositions a few of the rats one by one to loosen the knot, and finally, their tails release; the "king" is no more, and the rats are free. ...
"This curious phenomenon" of tangled tails is known in two rat species — black rats (Rattus rattus) and Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) — but it has also been observed in squirrels and cats ...
