Rat kings are phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, ice, or excrement. The animals reputedly grow together while joined at the tails. The numbers of rats that are joined together can vary, but naturally rat kings formed from a larger number of rats are rarer. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported.
Specimens of purported rat kings are kept in some museums. The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg (Thuringia) shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol-preserved rat kings are shown in museums in Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart. A rat king found in 1930 in New Zealand, displayed in the Otago Museum in Dunedin, was composed of immature Rattus rattus whose tails were entangled by horse hair. Relatively few rat kings have been discovered; depending on the source, the number of reported instances varies between 35 and 50 finds.
Historically, rat kings were seen as an extremely bad omen, particularly associated with plagues. This is a reasonable conclusion if they are formed naturally, since large populations of rats housed in insufficient space generally bring with them disease and pestilence. With an increase in the size of the rat population comes an increase of the chance of outbreak of disease — for example, the Black Death, which is spread by the rats’ fleas.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_(folklore)
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