By Tim Binnall
An incredibly rare living 'rat king' specimen was recently discovered in Estonia when a staggering 13 of the rodents were found with their tails stuck together in an impenetrable knot. The remarkable case reportedly unfolded last month near the city of Tartu when a woman tending to her chicken coop spotted an unusual mass of fur inside the small shack. Upon closer inspection, she was stunned to see that the oddity was a cluster of rats that had gotten entangled by their tails. She promptly phoned her son, Johan Uibopu, who dutifully arrived on the scene to tend to the unsettling situation.
Realizing that his mother had stumbled upon a remarkably rare 'rat king,' Uibopu contacted Andrei Miljutin of the Natural History Museum at the University of Tartu so that he could examine the specimen. According to the professor, there have only been around 60 such cases of the phenomenon in the last 500 years and that, in most instances, the rodents are dead before they can be studied by scientists. To that end, the grouping discovered in the chicken coop is believed to be one of just a tiny handful of instances wherein a living 'rat king' has ever been found.
That said, in an odd turn of events, the recent Estonian case is actually the second instance wherein an exceptionally rare living 'rat king' has been found alive in just the past few months, as a farmer in Russia discovered one back in September. Adding an eerie element to that curious timing, it is believed in some circles that the phenomenon is a portend of a forthcoming plague which is rather worrisome considering that we're currently in the midst of a global pandemic. As for the fate of the 'rat king' found near Tartu, the specimen was studied and then the rodents were ultimately euthanized as Miljutin could find no way to free them without severely compromising their chances for survival in the wild.