Tangled tale of rodents
QUESTION Are rat kings – bunches of rats joined together by their tails – a hoax?
A RAT king describes a rare phenomenon where a group of dead rodents are found with their tails tied together.
The name dates from the Middle Ages, and examples have been discovered in Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia and Indonesia. At least 30 documented cases are considered genuine.
Nearly all rat kings are composed of the black rat, Rattus rattus, responsible for carrying the Black Death across Europe in the Middle Ages. Most rat kings date from the 1300s to the mid-19th century.
The black rat has largely been supplanted by the brown rat,
Rattus norvegicus, in Europe, which explains why modern rat kings are rare.
The Mauritianum Natural History Museum in Altenburg, Germany, has the largest known mummified rat king of 32 rodents, which was found in 1828 in a miller’s fireplace.
A seven-animal rat king discovered in 1963 by farmer P. van Nijnatten at Rucphen in the Holland has been studied by scientists. X-rays showed dried blood and the formation of callus, or healing skin, at the fractures of the tails, which suggests the animals survived for some time with their tails tangled.
One hypothesis is that in cold weather, rats huddle together when sleeping in the nest. Their tails become frozen together and the animals try to free themselves by moving in different directions.
These chaotic movements result in their tails becoming entangled in a tight knot. J. Evans, Cardiff. IN 2005, the discovery of a rat king in Estonia caused a sensation. On January 16, farmer Rein Kiiv discovered a 16-strong rat king under the floor of his shed in the village of Saru. He had never heard of such a thing and put the rats on a pile of planks for visitors to see.
It was two months later that Evar Saar, a relative of the farmer’s wife and a local reporter, informed zoologists.
The rat king of Saru has been preserved in alcohol and is on display at the Natural History (Zoological) Museum at the University of Tartu. E. Richardson, Huntingdon.
QUESTION Why do Atlantic hurricanes head north-west towards the West Indies and Southern US and not in any other direction?
HURRICANES are steered by global winds. The prevailing winds that surround a hurricane and move it along its path are called the wind field, which dictates its speed and direction. True Atlantic hurricanes start life in the tropical region off the west coast of Africa. These are then swept westwards by easterly trade winds towards the Caribbean and North American coasts.
Hurricanes are also affected by the Subtropical Ridge, a large belt of high pressure 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres and characterised by calm winds.
A change in the ridge position of the Atlantic subtropical ridge, known as the Bermuda high, has a direct impact on the tracks of Atlantic hurricanes.
Atlantic hurricanes typically propagate around the south-western periphery of the subtropical ridge, riding its strongest winds. If the high is positioned to the east, then hurricanes move northeastward around the high’s western edge into the safety of the open Atlantic. However, if the high is to the west and extends far enough to the south, storms are blocked from curving north and forced to continue west, making a beeline on the Caribbean, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
Another factor affecting hurricanes is the Coriolis effect, the result of Earth’s rotation on weather patterns and ocean currents. This causes Atlantic hurricanes to rotate in a clockwise motion around a low-pressure centre (anti-clockwise in the Southern hemisphere). The Coriolis Effect is marginally stronger as the moving air moves toward the Earth’s poles, causing the lowpressure centre to sweep to West and toward the nearer pole.
A. Jackson, Plymouth.
QUESTION Was the recent expulsion of a Russian diplomat from Ireland the first time such a thing has happened here?
IT’S very unusual for any diplomats to be expelled from Ireland, but two Soviet diplomats and the wife of one of them were expelled in 1983 while more recently, in 2010, someone from the Israeli embassy was booted out.
The expulsions in 1983 came amid revelations that the Soviet embassy in Dublin was a clearing house for a major international spy ring. In September that year, the Irish Government expelled Gennadi Saline, a first secretary and press attaché at the embassy, as well as Viktor Lipasov, a second secretary, and his wife Irona, for ‘unacceptable activities’ – in other words, spying.
Irona Lipasov was a member of the KGB who visited the North of Ireland, London and northern of England on espionage missions. She was said to have led a spy ring that organised the supply of Soviet-made arms and ammunition to units of the IRA operating in the North of Ireland and in Eng- land. Irish Government sources added that all three were linked to intelligence gathering from countries outside Ireland, including Britain, especially on Nato activities, and that the information they had gleaned was sent to Moscow in code form, from the Soviet embassy in Dublin.
Before these 1983 expulsions, there had long been speculation that the Soviet embassy in Dublin was being used to help Soviet spies monitor Britain, as well as other western European countries. The expulsions in 1983 were the first time that Soviet diplomats had been expelled from Ireland and the next Russian expulsions didn’t come until this year.
The other diplomatic expulsion from Ireland was more recent, in June 2010, when a member of the Israeli embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin, was thrown out. The rank of the diplomat was not given, but it was believed at the time that he wasn’t a senior diplomat, but a security officer.
That expulsion came after investigations by the Passport Service and the gardaí into the manufacturing and misuse of fake Irish passports, which were used by assassins of Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh, when he was murdered in Dubai in 2010. D. Power, Dublin 7
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