this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Opossums

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[–] Anticorp 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is the myth of the rat king just an opossum mom moving her babies?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In case you're genuinely asking: sadly, no

First hint would be that ratking stories are from Europe, before westerners went to the US.

Rat Kings basically stem from rat nests with too little space. When rats got hurt and in rare cases managed to entangle their tails, while they healed and fused together

Rats are super social, so they will help their nest mates by bringing hurt rats food, which people mistook for the rats serving "a king"

The only thing that makes it somewhat less sad is, that is likely that all sightings are made up and it never actually happened

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago

I was genuinely asking. I think it's incredibly unlikely that tails would fuse together while healing. That sounds impossible, but I'm not a biologist, so I can't say for sure. I'm almost positive that all reported sightings are exaggerations, just like most fantastical stories of yore.