Rat Torture Method Is One Of Most Barbaric Used In History

It's hard to imagine, but there's a method of torture from history that's particularly brutal, even considering humanity's long and often violent past.

This method, which comes from medieval Germany, was once commonly used to deal severely with criminals and enemies of those in power.

Today, rats are considered a nuisance for many reasons, like rummaging through trash or scurrying around houses.

However, the way rats were used in this form of torture is unimaginably cruel.

So, how did this medieval rat torture work?

It began with placing rats, sometimes starved, on the exposed stomach of a person. Then, these rats were enclosed in a cage.

Hot coals would be placed atop this cage, heating it to the extent that the rats, desperate to escape, would begin gnawing through the person's skin.

Credit: Facebook / Medieval Torture Museum

The rats would tear into the person's flesh, eventually burrowing through to their organs.

The person would be in excruciating pain, screaming as they were literally being eaten alive from the inside.

And if you can believe it, there were even more horrifying versions of this torture.

In some instances, rats were placed directly inside a victim's body to eat their way out.

But the horror doesn't end there.

Moving to the 20th century, we find examples of rat torture being used in more modern times.

During Argentina's military junta from 1976 to 1983, Jewish political dissidents faced particularly gruesome forms of torture, including a variant of the rat torture method.

Survivor Daniel Fernández recounted to the CONADEP, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, how torturers used something called the 'rectoscope.'

Credit: X

This involved inserting a tube into a prisoner's anus, down which a rat would crawl and then burrow inside.

In Chile, under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship from 1974-1990, there are reports of female prisoners having rats inserted into their vaginas.

One prisoner, Lux de las Nieves Ayress Moreno, shared that her captors sought to infect her with toxoplasmosis through this grotesque form of torture in a bid to prevent her from ever being able to have children.

Thankfully, after her release, she was treated and eventually had a daughter.

Online reactions to these torture methods, shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, show people are deeply shocked.

One person related it to a scene in 2022's "The Batman," saying, "That scene from The Batman had me shivering for a month."

Another commented on the inventiveness of these methods: "The torture methods came up with are so wild."

And a third expressed, "This is the most horrific death I could imagine tbh."