Talk:Rat king

message: Wow, two things this article seems to very obviously be missing are
A. Reference to the Rat King from the 80s TMNT cartoon
B. Any attempt at etymology, I mean.. .rat -king-? Why are a bunch of stuck-together-rats a king? German word I'm not aware of? The article briefly mentions one explanation that is false, but that's all.
:It isn't obvious to me. Why don't you put the cartoon reference in the article. --Yath 21:23, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I notice that since this comment (and the accompanying paragraph in the article) was created, a disambig link has appeared to the article on the fictional character.  Given that, is a paragraph on the fictional character still appropriate for this article, or would a single sentence (like other the fictional appearances mentioned in the article) be more appropriate? 156.34.221.174 14:45, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't have a sorce for this, but I think in folk lore rat kings have mind control over normal rats.  That's how they get the rat peasants to feed it. OrdoAbChao 07:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fictional Character

message: Removed the Scientific American link because it had nothing to do with rat kings whatsoever. Soonercary 06:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: External Link

message: Even on preview. --HanzoHattori 22:33, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone forgot to close a ref tag, so everything after the tag wasn't being rendered.  This should be fixed now... --Starwed 03:31, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  only half of the article shows up 

message: The 1564 date quoted in the article that says "citation needed" can be found in Martin Hart's "Rats" on page 67 in the chapter on Rat Kings.  Published by Allison & Busby, 1982.  English translation by Arnold Pomerans.  .
The date refers to an illustration by Johannes Sambucus that accompanied a poem describing seven rats tied together.
I can't quite figure out how to format the citation correctly.
Fenrislorsrai 22:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I put in the citation you suggested after physically verifying it with my library's copy of Hart's book. I changed the page number to "66" as being the first instance in the book where Hart states "The first to depict a rat king was Johannes Sambucus ..." Nice citation find! --Quartermaster (talk) 00:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for date found 

message: What does "seek their own comfort" mean? Please use plain english and avoid euphimisms or idiomatic constructs.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.127.95.196 (talk • contribs) 16:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Writing style 

message: Why was this moved from "Rat king" to "Rat King (Cryptid)"? The only rationale in the edit summary is the adjective "Grammatical", but capitalising something which remains uncapitalised throughout the article seems to go against MOS:TITLE, and I'm not sure why this article was chosen to gain the cryptic "Cryptid" category, while the minor Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain gets to take the default unbracketed page.
Any support or feedback on moving this article back to "Rat king" and moving the cartoon villain to  "Rat King (TMNT)"? --McGeddon (talk) 17:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree with that, how on earth is a goddamned cartoon character the "main" artice? 111.97.175.172 (talk) 17:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

text: The "minor" Rat King villain is a lot more famous than the cryptid, and it's tremendously more likely someone searing for the Rat King is searching for the cartoon character. 76.28.193.166 (talk) 02:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not familiar with the show, but the article suggests that he's a minor villain who hasn't appeared much since the 1980s cartoon. The two articles seem about evenly split in the number of other articles that link to them, and a quick Google search shows the wider Internet to be mentioning the two contexts more or less equally - there's no "tremendously more likely" to either of them. --McGeddon (talk) 08:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: He was a cartoon villain seen by millions of living people around the world in the late '80s (and later in reruns, videos games, comics, etc.) The clump of rats has been (allegedly) seen by a relative handful of dead people (who don't use Wikipedia). I don't really care if the villain is or isn't treated as the primary topic here, but he undoubtedly should be. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article move (2008)

message: Gaining an interest when watching the 30 Rock episode referred to in the popular culture section, I noticed how the article fails to mention the instances of the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons that utilizes the folkloric Rat King to signify an increase in awareness among a collective of rats. 
One being a general mention of what Dungeons and Dragons refers to as "Cranium Rat", being a collective of rats the number of which determines the overall intelligence of the community, although sans the intertwined tails. 
A more obvious mentioning occurs in the computer game Planescape: Torment, wherein a large collective of supposed Cranium Rats called "Many as One" appears, showing itself as a collective of roughly a thousand rats intertwined by uncertain means, yet presenting itself as a large mass of rats.
Also, an initial quest in the computer game Fallout 2 features a Rat King, functioning as the cause of a local town's rat infestation. This, however, is revealed to be simply a very large, naked rat. 
I have refrained from adding any of this to the popular culture section, feeling that I am uncertain of how to approach the folkloric aspects of it, seeing how these instances at least in some regard have moved beyond the more zoologically interesting matter of the phenomenon. Perhaps a distinction between "folklore" and "zoology" would benefit the article? (November 2008)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.190.31 (talk) 22:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dungeons and Dragons 

message: It's been removed. Simple, obvious appearances do not merit mention in this article. The place for this information is in the various articles about the primary fictional works. Mintrick (talk) 00:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pop culture trivia 

message: I was wondering if it is likely that some of these might be conjoined (siamese) twins, triplets etc. It's an interesting possibility.
My own take on this, is that they were an ill omen in the sense of the rat population becoming so large in an area, and so well fed that these kind of freaks could survive.--MacRusgail (talk) 11:45, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conjoined? 

message: I know another meaning for "king rat", which is quite different. It refers to an extra large rat, which is said to lead the other rats into new territories. It's supposed to be about two/three times the size of the others. I have seen one or two very large rats in England, so they're certainly about.-11:51, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The rat king appears in novels such as China Miéville's King Rat, The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot, Ratking by Michael Dibdin, Peeps by Scott Westerfeld, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding, and Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle, Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross and The Rats by James Herbert.
The reason being, I just read the first of these books ("King Rat"), and there is, indeed, a fictional "king rat" in that book, but it is NOT a "rat king" in the sense of the topic under discussion here.  So I'm strongly inclined to doubt the other items as well.  There seem to be plenty of other better-grounded references in the "pop culture" section as is. Arided (talk) 18:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

text: User:Oknazevad added that text back in, saying that it wasn't appropriate to remove the references without disconfirming them.  I don't want struggle over this, though I'll note that the whole sentence is unsourced (and could just be as made up as the connection about King Rat).  I added a "citation needed" tag. Arided (talk) 23:51, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  King Rat 

message: Via reddit submission: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ztssu/my_coworker_sent_an_email_saying_he_would_be_late/, the image http://i.imgur.com/vrAYi.jpg shows five live squirrels with tails knotted together.  Although the process that created the "Squirrel King" was artificial (a mishap with christmas light strand), the product is strikingly similar to the folkloric rat king.  
Contextual description follows: "5 young squirrels got tangled in Christmas lights in my neighbor’s yard. We got the lights off, but now their tails are one big knot..."
74.121.38.141 (talk) 18:40, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photographic evidence of a modern 'rat' king 

message: Squirrel king formation Irish Melkite (talk) 04:59, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Squirrel king formation 

message: I could not decisively determine (in parts of the article) whether the rat king is something that happens in real life or if it is something in a story or if it is cryptic. --Mr. Guye (talk) 15:56, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Then clearly you did not read very carefully. The title of this article is in error, as rat kings do exists (see the page sources for real-world examples). That said, there has been a lot of folklore built up about them over the centuries, which is a big part of why researchers have always been skeptical about them and dismissed them as hoaxes until the most recent finds (including a squirrel king) have largely convinced people of their reality. The article makes this pretty clear, and the tag is unneeded. But so is a page move. oknazevad (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fact vs folklore 

message: Just wondering if it's creating a section for squirrel kings? Another example..  AprilHare (talk) 14:39, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similar case in squirrels 

message: I'm going to reword this article's lead section due to stuff being simply unsourced, per WP:EXCEPTIONAL.
Offending statement: "....but there are several well-attested modern occurrences" and also striking down the rest of it since it isn't on par with the article body. WP:LEAD.
I've looked at the sources given and machine-translated the non-English ones for all it's worth. Also read the old 2004 talk page discussion "#Myth?" and #Requested move 29 April 2016. While there's some evidence that it isn't complete folklore, currently, the wording really misleads the reader.  What it doesn't mention is how the specimens found themselves could be fabricated and what little support for their existence..is what it is...little support; the lead section's tone conveys the opposite message to the reader. The little support comes from the Estonian study and that too, offers more explanation. All of this can be added and is missing in the article.
I've found newer sources which are, while not scientific refs per se, they do shed light on this and support what I just mentioned. They are still better, more accessible than the given refs which are mostly consisting of museum pages. Per WP:BURDEN and WP:EXCEPTIONAL, the onus of finding the sources supporting it otherwise now lies on any editor who contests this change. 
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Honestly, I don't mind any editor going fully WP:BOLD and clearing this article. But yes, all in all, I do see why the previous discussion and requested move concluded to remove the "folklore" part and not outrightly brand this page as a hoax, which I suspected at first. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 21:09, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Done it, see it here. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I've updated it further here with the serious but concise addition of how plausible it is using the above refs. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 19:38, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

text: The paper 'Rat kings in Estonia' too may contain information to expand on. The other sources do mention it if I recall. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual accuracy  

message: Recently, a video was uploaded to Tiktok which seems to show a rat king. Link -   I have no info about veracity.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.77.222.238 (talk • contribs) 12:32, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible evidence 

message: there is an indie fishing game called dredge and they have a "anchovy king" WinRar40 (talk) 10:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  can someone add this 

message: The redirect Rat king (folklore has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Utopes (talk / cont) 01:36, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Rat king (folklore]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]