Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code
cnn.com
cnn.com
So they hired radicals to genetically engineer a retrovirus, to remove the tail. This worked, but due to unconsidered balance issues, all tail devoid children lost the capability for bipedal balance and therefore walking.
Most of these children, during their formative years spent their time on all fours, and thud their hand dexterity was pitiful, and society crumbled when they came of age.
It was another 46k years before a brain mutation emerged, re-enabling bipedal balance, but by that time all traces of the old civilization was lost, and thus, progress began anew.
Think of the human genome as sort of the ultimate dependency hell...
More info: https://berto-meister.blogspot.com/2011/08/unintelligent-des...
If nature doesn't refactor, then why are there so many crabs?
The famous Richard Dawkins video about that (4min long)
My example is testicles! Testicles begin in the same place as ovaries, which made a lot of sense back when we were coldblooded! Having a pair of balls dangling in a soft pouch between your legs isn’t a strategy you adopt if you can help it. In the alternate timeline where lizard people rose to dominate the earth instead of humans they don’t have “Ouch, I’ve been hit in the balls!” humor.
But the testicles form next to the kidneys early on in the developmental process (and as we’ve established, you don’t fuck with those stages), so they have to migrate south VERY late in the development! Because they SCHLOOP on down after everything else is pretty much in place, it weakens the abdominal wall, which is why men are more prone to certain types of hernias than women are.
Other layers include: epigenome-layer, transcriptome-layer, proteome-layer
Each layer can compensate for deficiencies in another layer.
So lets say you knock out a gene in utero and it has a phenotype. But when you do the same procedure in an adult organism, there is no phenotype, although the gene should be important in an adult. It's like phenotype and genotype are two states whose correlation is dependent on many variables. In this example at least time.
Also, I was enough a nerd growing up that other kids would have pulled it.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/114937-lo...
Something like a monkey, probably.
Sleep is easy: sleep on your side.
The rest sound like non-issues to me.
Hi we are Tailstyle! For far too long we’ve been accepting that our tails need to be naked like the rest of our bodies. Today I am offering you a share in our company for a very good price. Sharks, listen, everyone knows that wigs and toupees are amazing. What if I told you that my company we can put semi-permanent hair on your tail to look like a tiger! Or a panther? Or you could even have your tail look like that big flying dog in that one movie from the 80s you know which one I mean.
And not only that. We’re also making tail socks that you can wear for special occasions! Christmas tail socks. Wedding tail socks. Funeral tail socks. Homecoming ball tail socks. You name it!
If you scroll to the bottom check out how long this article went into peer review: almost 3 years!
Three years can get you a PhD in UK.
Received 14 September 2021
Accepted 19 January 2024
Published 28 February 2024
Median time is 268 days to acceptance at Nature. So this article was closer to 1000 days, above average.
"The parietal eye is found in the tuatara, most lizards, frogs, salamanders, certain bony fish, sharks, and lampreys...It is absent in mammals, but was present in their closest extinct relatives, the therapsids"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_eye
You may wish to consult your pineal gland.
[0] https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptation...
atmosphere thick enough, gravity low enough
[0] https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...
People would prefer to drive rather than fly because you’ll get soaking wet. Unless you just go around naked or something.
Even if the driving mutation identified in the study could be undone, “it still wouldn’t bring back the tail.”
Oh well.
The first bit of the article sure makes it sound like this DNA is what does it all.
They then tried to "more realistically" replicate the scenario. Instead of just snipping out exon6, they tried inserting in various elements into the mouse TBXT gene to emulate their model of how AluY is cutting out exon6. They attempted a few different methods which resulted in different models that would end up with different relative amounts of TBXT missing exon6 being produced. I'm having a hard time tracking all their conditions and lines at this point, but they seem to claim here that higher amounts of exon6 drop out correspond to shorter tails.
They also found that they could not get any viable mice with exon6 snipped from both copies of TBXT.
TBXT itself is a transcription factor, meaning that it controls the expression of other genes. There's probably a set of genes elsewhere that together make up the "tail-making machinery" that TBXT heavily interacts with. In this sense, TBXT 'might' be the most important single point lever, but at the same time not be fully in control of the underlying machine.
What does seem persuasive is that idea that this mutation kicked off some rate of tail lose in our ancestors, which then lead to some sort of selection advantage. The advantage was then made more durable by accumulating additional mutations to lock in the phenotype. In addition, once the "tail making machinery" is inactive, we have no idea how those genes might have been repurposed. I think it's in this sense that the scientists say that we probably can't bring tails back just by "fixing TBXT".
Wait - I finally found a use case for Neuralink that I can cheer for!
I'm not a furry, but I'm open to the possibility of getting that back!
Both great movies loosely based on both great but very different books by great authors, each with something unique and deep and important to say, that all stand on their own and are worth knowing.
I'd think in primate fighting, a tail would be big negative. It could be grabbed.
Can you imagine Chimp fights if they had tails that could be held on to and the owner dragged around.
Since a tail does not have a rigid endoskeleton, it can not act well as a lever. It's functionally a rope attached to your butt. Like even if you go full kangaroo mode and make the tail more muscular than the legs, making the tail rigid by flexing really hard, it basically turns into an inefficient leg with enormous mechanical disadvantages.
If you grab someone's leg, especially near the foot/ankle, you are relying on the rigidity of the joints to be able to control their torso (and therefore their ability to fight back). The most disadvantageous position to be in is to have someone behind you, while they fully control your ankle/foot. Now you can't fully turn your body to face your opponent.
For a sufficiently flexible tail, that would not be the case. Some could be behind you and control your tail near the tip, and you could still fully turn into your attacker with your torso.
This isn't to say that a tail can't become a liability.
A flexible tail doesn’t have that disadvantage to the grabber, especially if longer than a leg.
You might find BJJ pretty interesting. [https://renzogracieacademy.com/about/what-is-brazilian-jiu-j...], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0edxg2fFmw]
Judo teaches how to deal with it quite well too.
The legs are the strongest part of a human, the arms don't compare at all. And fighting from the ground can be VERY effective if you know what you're doing. Or don't just curl up and wait to die.
Ideally you'd be on your feet and able to move faster of course, and I wouldn't recommend against an opponent with a spear or other ranged weapon - but then they wouldn't be trying to grab my foot or leg anyway eh?
But unless the 'grabee' doesn't do anything, someone grabbing one foot from someone is likely using both hands (and most of their upper body) to attempt to control it - and there is a second foot/leg out there free to cause a lot of damage if they're willing.
It's not a 'one and done'/'game over' scenario by any stretch of the imagination if the party is even a little motivated.
Though I suspect most folks in this thread have no exposure to an actual fight beyond watching a video somewhere, so....
Also, many powerful leg locks entries fail to succeed in MMA, due to overcommitment of limbs.
Also. Chimps/Primates. Don't they fight more in packs.
So if the competition was 5 on 1, would the tail become an even greater disadvantage. It would be even harder to maneuver or run, become someone could grab the tail.
So this leads to a utilitarian equation - is the additional counterbalance going to provide a sufficient edge to override the risk it adds of a relatively weak limb that can be grabbed?
Because muay thai has a very structured set of rules and an environment which constrains it so that is the case. much less so than western boxing obviously, but the issue is even more obvious there.
generally still way better than no training of course.
BJJ folks consistently beat Muay Thai competitors in MMA for this reason.
being able to do both, plus some krav maga strikes? even better! though most krav maga if done with full earnestness would get you thrown in jail outside of a legit self defense scenario.
By the way, in full traditional muay thai, both quick and prolonged stand-up grappling is trained for.
BJJ is as often about transitioning to and from, and controlling on the ground fighting - so having both would be pretty solid ‘academically’ probably.
It’s not like if you get jumped in a dark alley by someone they’ll just back off and let you get up if you fall down. Unless they were really stupid anyway.
Same with broken bottles, random street junk used as weapons, knives, multiple opponents, etc.
Which neither are going to teach you much about practically in real life, but better than nothing.
I think I forgot to mention how the best way to win a fight is to not get in one? Haha.
In such a scenario, you'd probably attack from behind from a bit of an angle to force strikes from the other leg to be severely cross body.
My original point was not that attacking the leg was easy, my point is that a flexible tail doesn't give you much leverage and control and may not be as much of a liability as you think, since if you could access the tail anyways, you probably also had their back.
There’s only one way to find out! Who wants to join my ‘prehensile tails for humans’ (and other great apes with cash) startup?
Capitalism, wow!
Given that the tail was lost before the development of bipedality, how could this possibly be the case?
I think that assumes that a hypothetical modern human tail would still be attached to the spine. A tail structure attached to the main body only through soft tissues could be flexible enough at the root to not be an issue.
I suspect that there's another reason that apes lost their tails - most likely related to walking on two feet.
Edit: According to this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6417348/), the tailed chap had difficulty/pain when sitting and during other activites
Preserving the gut microbiome through diarrhoea and vomiting.
But it might not be that important at all; do people with an appendectomy struggle more to recover from diarrhea?
Be careful with assuming functionlessness, in general. Evolution does not like spending energy on sticky-out bits that are prone to injury, or good handles for predators to catch, unless they provide some serious advantage.
Balance and navigation (birds, cats, etc) is still somewhat related to the original function in fish.
Sexual attraction/signalling
Grabbing stuff
A third leg in kangaroos
Fly swatter (cows and other large grazers)
For kids to hold onto their parent (elephants)
I'm sure there's a lot of other creative applications of tails that I'm missing.
As long as you get a doctor involved, no modification is too horrific.
Once vitamin synthesis is back working, next up is amino acid synthesis. Amino acids are the constituent parts of proteins, your DNA is a bunch of instructions to fasten together a series of 22 different coded amino acids to make proteins. When you eat something, any proteins are broken back down into amino acids. Given some amino acids you can in principle make the others, but humans only make about half of them this way. As a result if your protein mix is wrong you are eating amino acids, and your body needs amino acids but some of them are different amino acids - and instead of synthesising the ones needed from spares you don't need using energy, which is abundant in most human societies, you just get sick and eventually (if you don't fix your diet) die. We should fix that.
Don't judge.
I'd also note I don't see any reason we'd want to synthesize our own vitamins now. It's virtually impossible to get a vitamin deficiency unless you try to eat a very restrictive diet for some other reason.
While it will become possible to restore auto-synthesis functionality, there are unknown risks associated with germ line edits reengineering Vit C or essential AA synthesis.
It's currently illegal to do so in 70 countries. Specific, very positive beneficial edits that protect against infections, malnutrition, or pathological diseases should be allowed.
(and sexual kinks)
It not only has to be convenient, but also to be sexually selected (partners with that seen as more attractive) or helping with survivability (partners with that live longer and get to reproduce more), which ain't really applicable anyway.
Which is the reason we don't have traits for any other minor "convenience" attribute either, but instead for long standing evolutionary benefits.
Blue eyes, for example.
Is it a choice? Evolution has both "life and death" and "sexual selection" aspects.
And "sexual selection" itself is tied to "life and death" - it just concerns the life and death (or rather: existence or non-existence) of the offspring and not the person.
So, in any case, it has to be big enough to affect whether the person gets an advantage in living more themselves, or gets an advantage for having children come to life.
I was replying to jeromegv's earlier comment of:
> It’s fascinating that most people don’t get that about evolution. It needs to be a matter of life and death, if it doesn’t, then it has no impact.
Death before one has had a chance to do so (or before any necessary utility towards one's offspring has passed) is evolutionarily 'bad'.
Things that help reproduction and success for one's offspring? Evolutionarily 'good'.
The tricky part is that a large portion of ANY human population is, near as I can tell, 'excess'/'hedging' population, and so will be 'doing poorly' in any given set of circumstances. Think of it as 'build time attribute randomization' when there is a random situation picked that people couldn't predict in advance.
That means that population wide, when circumstances change, the portion that is doing poorly vs doing very well can shift appropriately so the overall population survives. It is quite expensive, but seems necessary for us to have survived so long overall with the sheer number of apocalypses we know of (from plagues to invading armies), and the undoubtably countless ones we have forgotten.
This is true of any group or subgroup.
Lower chance of cataracts too.
Actually, considering how low the birth rates in developed countries are, humans would probably (very slowly) become less and less suitable for modern life.
There certainly are, but it is extremely rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail#Human_tails
> But while the new study explains the “how” of tail loss in humans and great apes, the “why” of it is still an open question.
Title is still clickbait.
If it’s not selected against, it wouldn’t spread at the cost of the tail gene.
Somehow, somewhere along the genome line, non-tailers overtook tailers.
Of course there is a why. It happend and not only was it not selected against, presence of a tail was selected against. Meaning it was, or came along with a beneficial adaptation. That benefit is why it took over our gene pool and why we don't have tails now.