A tail is grabbable.
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.
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.
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.
Given that the tail was lost before the development of bipedality, how could this possibly be the case?
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!
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?
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.
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. 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.
Also, many powerful leg locks entries fail to succeed in MMA, due to overcommitment of limbs.