I learned something way back in November, when I was googling "The Mouse King" for a project my department at the time was doing (we were decorating our area with Nutcracker themed paper arts. It's a long story.) Anyway, when I googled these three innocuous words, something rather strange came up on the radar. When I did an image search, I came across something rather unexpected. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, a Rat King:
This gruesome little number is indeed called a Rat King. Basically, it occurs when a bunch of rats get stuck together by the tail via blood, feces, mud, whatever. The tails get tangled up and they are stuck that way. Folklore suggests this to be a bad omen, typically portending plagues and other nasty things. The phenomena is rather rare nowadays, though it can still happen here and there. There are specimens available for viewing in some museums, notably Nantes' Natural History Museum in France
The picture up above isn't pleasant, but I've actually seen worse as far as Rat Kings go. You can read more about them here or here if you like. If you look it up in Wikipedia, try not to mix it up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain.
I haven't started that Human Origins and Evolution thing. Stay tuned!
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