What is a Giant Rat?
The giant rat is a commonly featured animal in fiction stories, especially fantasy, where it is often a challenger that must be defeated by a hero. This scenario was parodied in the 1987 cult film The Princess Bride. The concept of giant rats is probably very old, but the most famous recent mention was in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, a 1924 Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the story, Holmes says, “Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, …It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” This cryptic reference spawned dozens of stories involving such a giant rat.
