Group of squirrels whose tails are tangled together
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A squirrel king is a collection of squirrels whose tails have tangled together, making them unable to separate themselves.[1] It is similar to a phenomenon recorded in rats, the rat king.[2] A squirrel king starts as a litter of young in the same nest, whose tails become knotted together by nesting materials and/or by tree sap gluing the tails together, particularly if the young squirrels have been gnawing bark of the tree that their nest is in, letting sap flow. If the squirrels are not separated, they may fall to the ground still joined to each other when they try to come out of their nest, and will invariably die unless separated through human intervention.[3][4] Unlike the rat king, the squirrel king is not found in medieval European literature.[5]
The term rat king comes from the German, Rattenkönig, used to describe persons who lived off others. An alternative theory states that the name in French was rouet de rats (or a spinning wheel of rats, the knotted tails being wheel spokes), with the term transforming over time into roi des rats,[6] because formerly French oi was pronounced [we] or similar; nowadays it is pronounced [wa].
^Katherine Hignett (17 September 2018). "Squirrel King: Five Creatures Tied Together by Their Own Tails Discovered in Wisconsin". Newsweek.
^Lucas Reilly (24 October 2017). "An (Almost) Comprehensive History of Rat Kings". Mental Floss.
^Jaime Allen (21 September 2018). "What a Tangled Web a Few Squirrels' Tails Can Weave". ? How Stuff Works. InfoSpace Holdings.
^"Tangled Squirrels Rescued By Regina Animal Clinic (PHOTOS)". The Huffington Post Canada. 13 June 2013.
^Cite error: The named reference ISBN9781405384568-pp418 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Hart, Martin (1982). Rats. Translated from 1973 Dutch edn by Arnold J. Pomerans. Allison & Busby. pp. 66–67. ISBN 0-85031-297-3.
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