We take much for granted till we lose it. Friends and loved ones, good health, the hair on our heads and….. our tails. Tails? Yes, the self-same caudal appendage that most animals besides apes and humans are endowed with. And so begins the tale of the lost tail.
I can see you rolling your eyeballs and wondering if I was regressing into a primeval primate past. It’s a revolutionary hypothesis, I agree, but just give it a thought. Its a question that haunts every child—why dogs, cats, horses and every creature from Aardvark to Zorilla flaunt their tails, while we humans can boast of none?
How did we lose our tails?
It happened one night, many millions of years ago—more than 25 million, to be (somewhat) precise. A gene known to us as TBXT was extinguished, and a tail-less ape was born! Doubtless it was the suddenness of the event that left us with the lasting trauma of the lost tail. There seems to be little other reason for our fascination with tails – of other creatures, of course!
It might offer us some degree of solace, though, to know that we have not lost our tails completely. We had it for a brief while in our mothers’ wombs and we have a vestigial tail at the lowermost end of our spine. Silent and ignored; till coccydynia calls attention to it. A pain in the a**e, in layman’s terms!
The versatile tail
But why do we mourn our lost tail? Its the tail’s sheer versatility. Its a warm blanket, a marvellous swing, a rudder and a fly-whisk! As a language, ‘tail-speak’ is worth a thousand human words! The joyous wag of a dog’s welcome, its slow thump of contentment as it snuggles at your feet or its unmistakable admission of guilt, tail between its legs! Nor is it only the canines. Felines have their own tail code too—warning you with their slow deliberate twitch, while the rattlesnake sounds its deadly ‘advance at your own peril‘ rattle with a shake of its own.
Then its the power wielded by the tail. The strength in the crocodile’s prehensile tail, the sting in the scorpion’s, the poisonous whiplash of the stingray’s.
And in a multi-tasking world, an extra limb (or a tail), can be very handy. Not just for efficient housework, but for the near-impossible task of holding the beer can, packet of chips and the TV remote at one and the same time! But alas, a tail once lost cannot be grown again. Unless of course, you are a gecko!
Tail-less
How are we tail-less humans dealing with the blow that evolution has dealt us? Not very well, to be honest. For a start, we see tails everywhere. On tail-less plants like the cattails, the lamb’s tail, the monkey tail cactus, the burro’s tail to name just a few. We have also developed a rather unhealthy obsession for the rear end of our avian neighbours, and a deplorable tendency to address them on their caudal characteristics. If it wags its tail, its a wagtail. Likewise for a fantail, pintail or a forktail. Such is our focus on de-tails.
Our fascination doesn’t end there. Bereft of a tail, we tail-ored our clothes to create tails. Long coat-tails for the swish set. Fanciful trains like the peacock’s to grab eyeballs on the red carpet. We’ve even appropriated tail feathers of ostriches, herons, and egrets to feather our own caps.
In our desperate and deluded search for our missing tails, we’ve even mistaken our bountiful head of hair as displaced tails. We’ve twisted it into curly pigtails, bushy ponytails and braided fishtails. Even the (unkempt) rattail enjoys a moment of glory.
And when, in the throes of sorrow, we reach for the cup that cheers and fill it with a delightful concoction of spirits, what do we call it but……a cocktail !!