Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lam and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be part two of our two
Speaker 1: part episode about tales Now. Last time, we talked about
Speaker 1: many of the wonderful biological mysteries of tales, about the
Speaker 1: unsettled science of courtship tales and the role they play
Speaker 1: in p foul mating. We talked about propulsion, We talked
Speaker 1: about pre intile tales, climbing, climbing and anchoring, kangaroos using
Speaker 1: their tails, as as as what to become the rockham
Speaker 1: sock'em robots that kangaroos are. They lean back on those
Speaker 1: wonderful stumpy things. Talked about energy conservation, fat storage. But
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about biological methods of communication
Speaker 1: through tales, tales in in self mutilation for survival, and
Speaker 1: the question of human tales. Where are they are? Where
Speaker 1: they go? Are we going to get them back? Perhaps
Speaker 1: when the world is is perfect, we'll grow that that
Speaker 1: new utopian tail. We'll get to that too. So one
Speaker 1: of the first things that we should address is the
Speaker 1: role of tales in animal communication. I remember we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the echo Board podcast that much of human communication
Speaker 1: is nonverbal. It's one of the reasons it's so easy
Speaker 1: to be misinterpreted over email or in a text message.
Speaker 1: Your tone, your facial expressions, and your body language supplies
Speaker 1: sort of the shadow grammar of what you're saying. And
Speaker 1: for dogs, the tail can do a lot of this work.
Speaker 1: In fact, it might be especially important for dogs because
Speaker 1: dogs don't have language. They can't speak. They might be
Speaker 1: able to communicate something roughly through barks and other vocalizations.
Speaker 1: But but the tail is where it's at. And you
Speaker 1: know this, like some of these things you already know
Speaker 1: by heart, dogs tuck their tails between their legs to
Speaker 1: show submissiveness. That's pretty obvious and widely accepted. You could
Speaker 1: even compare this tail tucking to closed body language and humans.
Speaker 1: We you ever thought about that? Yeah, yeah, so sort
Speaker 1: of even without the tail, we kind of assume that posture,
Speaker 1: this sort of you know, passive, helpful pronosaurus uh kind
Speaker 1: of positioning you can take. Yeah, or if we're if
Speaker 1: we're feeling apprehensive, we can fold our arms and kind
Speaker 1: of shrink the way you you would when a dog
Speaker 1: tucks its tail and gets low. Uh. And we we
Speaker 1: think that dogs wag their tails to show they're happy.
Speaker 1: This is sometimes the case, but not always. I read
Speaker 1: an interesting National Geographic article that talked to an Oregon
Speaker 1: State University animal sciences professor named Monique ou Dell. And
Speaker 1: according to this article, dog's signal playfulness with a circular
Speaker 1: kind of wild, circling wag. But they can also signal
Speaker 1: apprehensiveness too by a showing a slower, more controlled wag.
Speaker 1: That might be the case in general, but some research
Speaker 1: shows it gets even more specific with what dogs communicate
Speaker 1: by their wags. And I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting papers in current biology on dogtail wagging.
Speaker 1: So if you have a dog at home, next time
Speaker 1: it starts to wag its tail, look at the directional
Speaker 1: amplitude of tail wagging. And I do want to throw
Speaker 1: in you yourself or a dog owner? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Are you no a dog? No? I'm I just have
Speaker 1: one horrible cat right now. Um, and they've never really
Speaker 1: been a dog person. But I know that some people
Speaker 1: new to the either new to the show or who
Speaker 1: are used to you know, previous host arrangements. Um, you
Speaker 1: know it may not be familiar that we now have
Speaker 1: dog owners dog people on the podcast right. Well, I
Speaker 1: have one dog. My wife Rachel and I have a
Speaker 1: dog named Charles Darwin. Charlie and I have not yet
Speaker 1: tried to track Charlie's asymmetric tail wagging, which I'm about
Speaker 1: to get into, but I plan on doing that for
Speaker 1: the rest of the week. Anyway, there was a paper
Speaker 1: in March two thousand seven called asymmetric tail wagging responses
Speaker 1: by Dogs two different emotive stimuli. And this, like I said,
Speaker 1: was in Current Biology, and here a group of researchers
Speaker 1: discovered what they called quote differential amplitudes of tail wagging
Speaker 1: to the left or the right side associated with the
Speaker 1: type of visual stimulus the animals were looking at. So
Speaker 1: what this means is, depending on how you visually stimulated
Speaker 1: the dog, what you show a dog, it would tend
Speaker 1: to wag to the right or to the left. Now,
Speaker 1: the tail. If you're picturing how a dog's tail wags,
Speaker 1: it goes both ways. It wags back and forth, but
Speaker 1: the amplitude varies, so as it goes back and forth,
Speaker 1: it might trend more to the left or trend more
Speaker 1: to the right. I've never noticed that before. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so the experimenters put each dog in a special no
Speaker 1: distractions box that didn't allow it to look at anything
Speaker 1: else interesting, and it had one opening that the dogs
Speaker 1: could see through, and it would allow them to see
Speaker 1: things in one direction. And the shoal stimuli they tested
Speaker 1: were the dog's owner, and then an unknown person stranger danger,
Speaker 1: and then a dominant unfamiliar dog, so this is a
Speaker 1: dog that has been trained to be the boss and
Speaker 1: kind of scary, and then a cat, and then of
Speaker 1: course a control of a blank panel. And they were
Speaker 1: very interesting results when they observed the dogs in these conditions.
Speaker 1: They found that when the dogs looked at their owners,
Speaker 1: they showed a strong right side wag bias uh, and
Speaker 1: the unfamiliar human got less wagging and a weaker right
Speaker 1: side bias. The cat got much less wagging and a
Speaker 1: very very slight right side bias, the unfamiliar dominant dog
Speaker 1: got a left side bias, and then the blank control
Speaker 1: also got a slight left side wag bias. And the
Speaker 1: interpretation of these results actually had to do with brain lateralization,
Speaker 1: possibly in anticipation of motor control. They said, quote in
Speaker 1: our experiment stimuli that could be expected to elicit approach tendencies,
Speaker 1: So the dog wanting to approach, such as seeing the
Speaker 1: dog's owner, were associated with higher amplitude of tail wagging
Speaker 1: movements to the right side left brain activation, and stimuli
Speaker 1: that could be expected to elicit withdrawal tendencies such as
Speaker 1: seeing a dominant unfamiliar dog were associated with higher amplitude
Speaker 1: of tail wagging movements to the left side, and they
Speaker 1: thought this meant right brain activation. So in the study
Speaker 1: we learned something about how the lateral bias of a
Speaker 1: tailwag indicates the mindset of a dog. But the big
Speaker 1: question is do other dogs notice this? Yeah? Like it?
Speaker 1: I mean it would seem like they would. I mean,
Speaker 1: just based on what we've studied about, you know, human
Speaker 1: micro expressions and whatnot, so many things that are that
Speaker 1: we end up picking up either consciously or subconsciously as
Speaker 1: we're observing another person's body language. And we found out
Speaker 1: the dogs totally do notice this. So the same authors
Speaker 1: of the two thousand seven study, three of them, were
Speaker 1: also authors on a November studying Current biology called seeing
Speaker 1: left or right Asymmetric tail wagging produces different emotional responses
Speaker 1: and dogs. So this is dogs looking at video of
Speaker 1: another dog wagging its tail to the left or right,
Speaker 1: or also a frozen no wag posture, And then I
Speaker 1: thought this was really clever. They tried this both with
Speaker 1: normal video of a dog wagging its tail and then
Speaker 1: also just with a black silhahwett of the wagging dog
Speaker 1: on a white background to eliminate other possible cues from
Speaker 1: the dog, like eyes or facial expressions, and they discovered
Speaker 1: this didn't really make a difference. The silhouette wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't a big difference from looking at regular video of
Speaker 1: the dog, And so the researchers measured the dog's heart
Speaker 1: rate and then just observe their behavior as they watched
Speaker 1: the different wags, and the results were that there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a difference between how dogs reacted to the right
Speaker 1: wagon static control, but when they saw a left wag,
Speaker 1: the dog started showing elevated heart rates as if they're
Speaker 1: now experiencing stress or anxiety, and the behavioral observation also
Speaker 1: showed that the dogs exhibited more behaviors associated with stress
Speaker 1: when they saw the left wag. Curiously, both the left
Speaker 1: wag and the static control were more stressful than the
Speaker 1: right wag according to this observation metric. So a dog
Speaker 1: sees another dog with the right wag, that's cool. Dog
Speaker 1: sees a dog that isn't wagging at all, It seems
Speaker 1: like the dog might be getting some stress reaction there,
Speaker 1: maybe because it can't figure out what to make of
Speaker 1: this dog if it's not wagging at all. Dog sees
Speaker 1: a dog with a left wag. That's definitely a stress reaction.
Speaker 1: Something's going on here, okay, And this is definitely the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that a human could pick up on
Speaker 1: two right, Like that that it's not so uh slide
Speaker 1: a movement that we wouldn't be able to see it. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean they were able to measure it with video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't sure that meant that you had to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, slow it down and all right, let's zoom
Speaker 1: in on the tail and see to what degree it's
Speaker 1: actually moving. You know, this is something we would be
Speaker 1: able to observe. Say that your local dog park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from everything I could tell, I think, I mean you'd
Speaker 1: have to pay close attention. Okay, So maybe the dog
Speaker 1: park might be too distracting a location to try to
Speaker 1: stop yeah, And so they didn't want to draw too
Speaker 1: many conclusions about exactly what this means about the dog's emotions.
Speaker 1: I I might have gone a little too far if
Speaker 1: I said it was definitely stress a minute ago, because
Speaker 1: what they could look at was these these external behaviors
Speaker 1: and then elevated heart rate. So that could mean any
Speaker 1: number of things. But at least when a dog sees
Speaker 1: another dog wagging left it, it's having some kind of
Speaker 1: elevated response. So in this way, dogs do communicate something
Speaker 1: very relevant about their state of mind with a wag,
Speaker 1: and they can see it in other dogs. And that
Speaker 1: makes me think some interesting questions about the nature of communication. Like,
Speaker 1: in a very different way, the idea of communication by
Speaker 1: tail could also apply to something like a rattlesnake. Mean,
Speaker 1: the rattlesnake is definitely communicating with its tail. It is
Speaker 1: saying don't get near me. Yeah, And so what did
Speaker 1: the dog and the rattlesnake have in common if we
Speaker 1: assume dogs inadvertently communicating information with tail wags, and I
Speaker 1: mean inadvertently here, I'm talking about the fact that the
Speaker 1: evolutionary purpose of the right or left side bias isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily to share information with others. It might simply be
Speaker 1: a totally accidental byproduct of this brain lateralization they're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like the wag might not
Speaker 1: be an adaptation that was selected for because it shared information.
Speaker 1: It might be an accident, but it's an accident that
Speaker 1: does share information, and now they've learned how to make
Speaker 1: something of that. So in what sense could we say
Speaker 1: that this is communication if it's just an accidental byproduct
Speaker 1: that we've learned how to draw information from. And to
Speaker 1: what extent does communication have to be deliberate? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean that kind of underlies the complexity of communication in general,
Speaker 1: you know, this mix of deliberate and accidental cues and
Speaker 1: then and mis cues that we have to make sense off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder about the origins of human language.
Speaker 1: I know that's not exactly the subject today, but just
Speaker 1: like could human could something like human language have come
Speaker 1: from originally I don't know, incidental vocalizations that were not
Speaker 1: intended to communicate information, but they did, And then that
Speaker 1: could develop into something where we harness that for deliberate use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could all begin with just a simple you know,
Speaker 1: scream when you're scared, you know, and then that the
Speaker 1: various nuances involved in in in how we interpret that screen.
Speaker 1: Now here's another topic related to tails that I think
Speaker 1: you've done a whole episode on before, which is when
Speaker 1: you pick up a bluetail lizard, you catch it, say,
Speaker 1: in a shoe box, and then its tail comes off
Speaker 1: and the children start screaming, Yes, what's going on there? Well,
Speaker 1: this brings us into the area of autotomy. Uh, as
Speaker 1: it's referred this is the shedding of a tail. Nada.
Speaker 1: You know that the animals not chewing the tail off,
Speaker 1: it's not pulling the tail off. It's just simply and
Speaker 1: not a mouse in a glue trap situation here, just
Speaker 1: a straight up shedding of the tail. And indeed lizards
Speaker 1: get go skinks. H. This is where you you see
Speaker 1: most of the examples of Caudle autonomy caudles and related
Speaker 1: to the tail. And certainly there is a there's a
Speaker 1: whole episode of stuff to blow your mind that goes
Speaker 1: into this in a lot more detail and draws from
Speaker 1: specific studies. Uh, But for our purposes here, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to go over in brief what's occurring. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you mentioned blue tailed skinks. Skilton skink, which is a
Speaker 1: blue tailed skink, is a is a perfect example of
Speaker 1: autotomy because the tail is bright blue, so it just
Speaker 1: adds to the attractiveness of this what is essentially thought
Speaker 1: of as a predator bribe. So like a cat sees
Speaker 1: a lizard and says, I'm gonna eat that lizard, and
Speaker 1: the lizards might not eat it yet. Yeah, yeah, certainly
Speaker 1: there's a whole the I'm going to torture. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: game of cat perdition is is rather complicated and cruel,
Speaker 1: but essentially the lizard reaction is, look, I'm gonna leave,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to leave a little of me behind. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, it has fat in it, it's part
Speaker 1: of me. You can eat it and you will get
Speaker 1: a meal out of it. I'm gonna leave you a meal. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be easier to catch and put up less
Speaker 1: of a fight. But it's also thrashing around as if
Speaker 1: it's alive. It's also bright blue, so it's easier to see.
Speaker 1: So it really is in a sense of bribe. It's
Speaker 1: not just a decoy. It's not just something that the
Speaker 1: cat gets nothing out of. You could eat the tail
Speaker 1: and get some nutrition. Yeah, it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: if you have some sort of like a bank heist
Speaker 1: movie where I've seen this pop up in various stories before,
Speaker 1: where the antiheroes are the heroes have made off with
Speaker 1: the loot that somebody the law enforcement is chasing them.
Speaker 1: Then you have to say, how much money would I
Speaker 1: have to drop out of the back of this truck
Speaker 1: where they would stop, like they would actually pick up
Speaker 1: some of the loot and make off on their own,
Speaker 1: or you know, be satisfied with it. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a gamble that the lizard is making. Another
Speaker 1: example of this kind of behavior. And this isn't certain,
Speaker 1: but there are arguments that a vulture vomits when threatened
Speaker 1: as as a as a form of bribery as well
Speaker 1: just saying you can eat me, I'm going to put
Speaker 1: up a fight, or I could just barf up some
Speaker 1: food here and you can eat that because delicious as
Speaker 1: we all know, I mean, particularly dogs of many animals,
Speaker 1: they're they're not gonna be too picky about their food.
Speaker 1: If it's just because it's been in the belly of
Speaker 1: a vulture, it doesn't mean it can't be eaten. Fascinating.
Speaker 1: Now there's a there's another theory about lizard autotomy, and
Speaker 1: this one comes to us from a two thousand nine
Speaker 1: University of Michigan study of lizards in Greece that concluded
Speaker 1: that the are there drop their tails when bitten on
Speaker 1: the tail by venomous snakes. Wow. Yeah, so it's the same.
Speaker 1: It's they or maybe they don't know. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not a brain response, but there's some kind of
Speaker 1: automated response. That's that's amazing. Yeah, I mean it's it
Speaker 1: matches up rather nicely with our you know, our zombie
Speaker 1: fiction where someone's bit by a zombie, you know, on
Speaker 1: the Walking Dead, and then you have to solve that
Speaker 1: limb off so that the so that that the zombie
Speaker 1: juice won't seep in and affect the whole organism. But
Speaker 1: the great thing about that, in the zombie stories, you
Speaker 1: never really know if it's gonna work. Yeah, it's true. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't have settled zombie science, do you. It seems
Speaker 1: like it always does. Like there seems to be a
Speaker 1: silent rule of zombie fiction that if you go and
Speaker 1: actually do the grueling hard to watch the limb amputation scene,
Speaker 1: then that character has to survive. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I've encountered it in ways that say it buys you
Speaker 1: some time, but it doesn't completely solve the problem. Maybe
Speaker 1: you've got to a smaller concentration of of zombie juice
Speaker 1: in the door. Then, um, so science scientist, you know,
Speaker 1: to to go back to the cat example, Like scientists
Speaker 1: have long thought the tail shedding is an issue of
Speaker 1: predator pressure. But and so this would mean that the
Speaker 1: more predators there are for a species in a given area,
Speaker 1: the greater the need for an effective defense mechanism. So
Speaker 1: tail dropping explodes in in any area of high lizard
Speaker 1: predator pressure. But this two thousand nine study, um, you know,
Speaker 1: argues that the lizards of the offshore A, G, and
Speaker 1: C Islands examined in the study, Um, in these cases
Speaker 1: it all comes down to an evolutionary reaction to their
Speaker 1: single most pressing predator, in this case the vipers. So
Speaker 1: these are specialized lizard predators, and so you see an
Speaker 1: emergence of a of a specialized uh anti predator defense. Now,
Speaker 1: I wonder how this adaptation affects the viper hunting strategy. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because any of these these areas, it's Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's an arms race with one side trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with the other. Certainly, So here's a question I've
Speaker 1: never found out. Can they grow it back? They can
Speaker 1: grow it back, but it's not the best way to
Speaker 1: think of it is it's not a full size spare.
Speaker 1: You'll grow back a tail that is uh less functional,
Speaker 1: you know, but but also a tail that can be
Speaker 1: can also be dropped again. So when they dropped the tail,
Speaker 1: the muscles that encircle uh this particular plane of the
Speaker 1: creatures of body, they constrict kind of natural tourniquet to
Speaker 1: to keep the you know, blood from from bleeding out.
Speaker 1: And then immediately after this, the skin also contracts around
Speaker 1: the end of the of the tail, forming a stub,
Speaker 1: and then it goes out from there. In these little
Speaker 1: lizards that are everywhere, that's that's science fiction. It's got
Speaker 1: a natural tourniquet. Yeah. And if you're wondering how it
Speaker 1: even uh severs it to begin with, there's been some
Speaker 1: cool studies and of this they point out that the
Speaker 1: tail autonomy occurs at preformed horizontal fracture points. So essentially, um,
Speaker 1: it's a fracture plane across the vertebra. Um or the
Speaker 1: the the intervertebral and the lizard assists the the autatonomy
Speaker 1: by by contracting the muscles around that fracture plane. And
Speaker 1: here the structural integrity of the tail in its connection
Speaker 1: to the rest of the body is maintained by the
Speaker 1: adhesion force of integrated muscles, complete with micro structures that
Speaker 1: mushroom out when it's time to release the tail man. Now,
Speaker 1: it's of course, it's it's interesting when you start thinking
Speaker 1: about the costs here. You know, the cost of that
Speaker 1: bribe if you're making, or the cost of losing that
Speaker 1: limb to the zombie or the or the viper. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a calculated risk because it sounds like
Speaker 1: losing the tail isn't going to hurt the lizard, except
Speaker 1: that it's just admitting defeat on a certain front. It's saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've put a certain number of resources into the tail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to give it up. Yeah, it's letting.
Speaker 1: It's letting the bad money go down the drain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bad money's gone down the drain. And then what
Speaker 1: do you do when another cat shows up. That's it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful trick. But once you've you've used it. You've
Speaker 1: got to regrow that tail to get to the point
Speaker 1: where you can drop it again. Um. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's an interesting strategy and and indeed a gamble, but
Speaker 1: one that's been paying off for him because it's it
Speaker 1: remains a staple of of a number of different reptiles.
Speaker 1: Does anything other than a lizard drop its tail, Yes,
Speaker 1: And that brings us back to the scorpion um. There
Speaker 1: there are rare there are a few rare South American
Speaker 1: scorpions of the Anatrists genus who also practice coddle autotomy.
Speaker 1: And when they lose their tails, First of all, they
Speaker 1: lose it for good. There's no growing the tail back
Speaker 1: in this case. Uh they have. They just drop it
Speaker 1: and it's gone. But also if they lose their tail,
Speaker 1: they lose their anus, and that's because the scorpions anus
Speaker 1: is located at the end of the tail the gut.
Speaker 1: The gut extends through the tail and opens up at
Speaker 1: the back of the fifth segment, just ahead of the
Speaker 1: stinger segment um initially draws. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: what's the difference between tails? What are tails like? This
Speaker 1: is a drastically different tail structure than you find in
Speaker 1: other creatures because the gut extends back there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the anus is at the almost the end of
Speaker 1: the tail. That's crazy. Can you imagine if you had
Speaker 1: an appendage that you pooped out of, like if you
Speaker 1: could if you could reach into a hole and then
Speaker 1: poop in the hole, it would it would totally change
Speaker 1: our bathroom behavior, that's for sure. Now you probably wonder
Speaker 1: what happens to the scorpion when it's lost its tail
Speaker 1: and it's lost its anus, uh fleeing from a predator. Well,
Speaker 1: it essentially cannot poop again for the rest of its lie.
Speaker 1: So it ends up just inflating like a fecal balloon
Speaker 1: until it dies. That's a nightmare. Yeah, but hey, it's
Speaker 1: a living nightmare as opposed to just dying. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the hard truth of survival right there. And when
Speaker 1: you've got when you've got pinching claws like a scorpion,
Speaker 1: what else really matters? Yeah, you still have your claws
Speaker 1: like the pinch the world. The creature is still functional.
Speaker 1: As we pointed out in the last episode, um, a
Speaker 1: scorpion doesn't even use its tail when it's dealing with
Speaker 1: a smaller or easier to handle prey, so so you
Speaker 1: can keep stuffing yourself with things that you cannot poop. Ever, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's not game over. It just means you can't
Speaker 1: staying and you can't poop. But life goes on, Life
Speaker 1: finds a way, you know. One of the one more
Speaker 1: thing about autotomy that I thought was interesting is that
Speaker 1: it reminds me of certain mythological tales in these mythical creatures.
Speaker 1: You know, there are tons of mythical creatures that are
Speaker 1: amalgamations of different kinds of animals. So they've got the
Speaker 1: head of a lion and the ways of an eagle
Speaker 1: and the beak of squid or something. But there are
Speaker 1: some animals that have tails that are snake tails, but
Speaker 1: they're not just snake tails as in the tail of
Speaker 1: a snake like a snake's tail, but they have a
Speaker 1: tail that is a snake, as in the front half
Speaker 1: of a snake, a snake with a head. I know,
Speaker 1: I've seen this mentioned, and at least some versions of
Speaker 1: the cerberus or caraboss, smith, the chimera, and I think
Speaker 1: the new a creature all seem to have at least
Speaker 1: in some versions that I've seen mentioned the tales that
Speaker 1: aren't just snake tails but are snakes, And I don't
Speaker 1: know that that seems like an interesting parallel to the
Speaker 1: idea of of tales that can become separated and then
Speaker 1: sort of have a life of their own, like they
Speaker 1: some of these tales that they get cut off keep
Speaker 1: wiggling right, And I wonder if stories like this could
Speaker 1: have been inspired by seeing tales that that can separate
Speaker 1: and continue to live, like is that a snake or
Speaker 1: a worm? Now? Huh? Well, you know. And it also
Speaker 1: would seem in such a creature that it would make
Speaker 1: sense to have a tail that resembles a snake for
Speaker 1: either defensive or predatory purposes. Oh, certainly, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of a particular there's a particular snake and a polotician.
Speaker 1: Not having the details, it's in a I did a
Speaker 1: Monster of the Week post about Cthulhu as Cthulhu appears
Speaker 1: in a particular movie from the nineties and uh, and
Speaker 1: in that I talked about a type of snake where
Speaker 1: its tail is used to lure in other creatures. And
Speaker 1: the tail I believe is supposed to look a little
Speaker 1: bit like, uh, a little bit like feathers, I believe.
Speaker 1: So there are cases where the tail is used as
Speaker 1: a decoy to to lure something in. Huh, well, I
Speaker 1: think it's time to talk about Homo sapiens Robert. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will talk about the human tail. So the big question,
Speaker 1: where's the human tail? Exactly? It's been god for a
Speaker 1: long time. We're angry. We want our tails, you know,
Speaker 1: as as individuals who were not born with them. We
Speaker 1: wonder like, where where are they? Or do we have
Speaker 1: ancestors that once had tails? Um? Because apart from from
Speaker 1: apes um, and then that's the main area. Us and
Speaker 1: our fellow great ape can we have no tails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can look at other mammals. So obviously our
Speaker 1: vertebrate ancestors we believe had tails, but there are other
Speaker 1: mammals that have adapted to not have tails anymore, right
Speaker 1: right there, moles, hedgehogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, bears, bats, koalas
Speaker 1: sloths of goodies, uh, and a handful of other creatures.
Speaker 1: But that we are the larger primates are certainly the
Speaker 1: most outstanding examples. Right So, yeah, we're part of the
Speaker 1: great apes family. When did the apes lose their tails? Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like this happened around twenty million years ago. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fossil evidence points to proconsul an early fossil eight from
Speaker 1: about eighteen to twenty million years ago, located Eastern Africa
Speaker 1: areas including Kenya and Uganda. And in this particular species,
Speaker 1: based on the fossil evidence, again we see a mixture
Speaker 1: of Old World monkey and eight characteristics. UH. And it's
Speaker 1: one of the if not the first eight species that
Speaker 1: we see without a tail, based again on what the
Speaker 1: bones tell us. Now it still raises the question though, alright,
Speaker 1: so twenty million years ago, that's the timeline. But why right,
Speaker 1: So if tails are useful, why don't we have them anymore?
Speaker 1: And I think this draws on a principle of evolution
Speaker 1: that that we often see, which is that over time,
Speaker 1: if you're not making use of something, you'll lose it.
Speaker 1: If you don't need it, it'll go away. It might
Speaker 1: take some time to go away, but eventually it will
Speaker 1: go away. It's just the basic economics of evolution. You know,
Speaker 1: things like all these features that you have. It's like
Speaker 1: explaining it to a child, right, all these fancy features
Speaker 1: we have in the house. These are extra and if
Speaker 1: we're not using that lightbulb, then uh, in that lamp,
Speaker 1: we need to turn it off. And then that's kind
Speaker 1: of just the natural way that the forms constrict and
Speaker 1: grow over time. But what are some major hypotheses about
Speaker 1: why it's lost their tails, like why did they become useless? Well,
Speaker 1: I was reading about this and Reachard Richard Dawkins the
Speaker 1: ancestors tail and that's t a l e. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's not all about tales, but he he points out
Speaker 1: that this is largely an under addressed topic and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: but they're there are a couple of theories that he discusses.
Speaker 1: One is the hopeful monster theory. Yeah, and this this
Speaker 1: has to do with this sort of random mutation. He
Speaker 1: points out that that max cats have a single gene
Speaker 1: that makes them tail less. These are the cats that
Speaker 1: don't have tails tail as cats. And it all comes
Speaker 1: down to again, do just a single gene. And it's
Speaker 1: also homozygous, meaning that it's lethal if present twice, so
Speaker 1: it's un likely to spread through evolution. But the idea
Speaker 1: he is here is that perhaps some form of max monkey,
Speaker 1: some sort of random tail was monks monkey was an
Speaker 1: exception to the rule, and this random mutation just became
Speaker 1: the norm. Not a very exciting theory, but it Anny
Speaker 1: lays it out as sort of a you know, a
Speaker 1: distant possibility here, those just sort of an accident amplified, right.
Speaker 1: The better theory the more the one with more weight
Speaker 1: to it. Here is the biped theory, and this is
Speaker 1: that uh that many tailed primates are occasional bipeds, and
Speaker 1: when something like a spider monkey walks in all fours,
Speaker 1: the tail gets in the way. So it can be
Speaker 1: surmised that tree active gibbons have no tails because they
Speaker 1: project themselves to other branches from a vertical hanging position
Speaker 1: rather than the monkey's horizontal leaping posture. For the gibbon,
Speaker 1: the tail would be a drag rather than a steadying rudder.
Speaker 1: This sort of goes back to what I was talking
Speaker 1: about in the previous episode. When you see all these
Speaker 1: New World monkeys with their pre insile tails, um you
Speaker 1: you often see them in these thickly forested environments where
Speaker 1: they're they're swinging from trees and they're using the tails
Speaker 1: and in climbing situations. The more bipedal you get it
Speaker 1: seems like the less need you really have for a tail.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that the large vegetarian for the
Speaker 1: most part, land based apes perhaps had increasingly little use
Speaker 1: for either fast attacks or speedy retreats from predators, you
Speaker 1: know which in which case that that tail would be
Speaker 1: handy and shooting up into the trees, etcetera. And as such,
Speaker 1: many of the primary tail uses were lost to them. Again,
Speaker 1: it's just the the economics of evolution. You can also
Speaker 1: factor communication into this, because if we're using we're depending
Speaker 1: more on vocalization, then maybe there's less need for that
Speaker 1: communication uh device that we call a tail. If you
Speaker 1: can say words, you don't need the dogs right egg
Speaker 1: left wag signal. Yeah, it's really the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this topic is, like all these different animal examples we've
Speaker 1: brought up, we kind of had to go through all
Speaker 1: those to even address this still unanswered question of where
Speaker 1: the tail went, because you have to think about not
Speaker 1: only what a tail doesn't and you know, for one species,
Speaker 1: but what a tail can do across the board to
Speaker 1: end up with some sort of answer for why we
Speaker 1: don't have one at all. Yeah, Now this is funny
Speaker 1: because we're saying we don't have tails, which is true,
Speaker 1: but in a certain way that's not exactly true. That's right,
Speaker 1: because we do have tailbones. We do, and m it's
Speaker 1: just kind of a it's a vestigial um part of
Speaker 1: our vertebrae, just sort of coiled up there, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: inside our butts essentially. Uh. And it's also why it
Speaker 1: hurts so much if you fall, particularly if you fall
Speaker 1: into the small in your back or directly under your butt,
Speaker 1: say while you're um, you know, skating or something, because
Speaker 1: there's there's not enough padding for the cossacks back there. Now,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned either at the beginning of this episode
Speaker 1: or perhaps at the beginning of the first tail episode,
Speaker 1: um tales are hard coded into us enough that they
Speaker 1: remain a part of our embryonic development. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you watch an embryo develop in the womb, you'll you
Speaker 1: can see stages where it gets a tail and then
Speaker 1: it loses the tail again. Yeah. And we've all seen
Speaker 1: comparisons between say, a killer whale embryo and a human
Speaker 1: embryo and how close they are, right, because essentially you
Speaker 1: have this sort of uh, you know, theygue mammalian embryo
Speaker 1: that then develops more and more until it looks more
Speaker 1: and more human or more and more like a killer whale.
Speaker 1: During the fifth and six weeks weeks of life, the
Speaker 1: human embryo has a tail with ten to twelve vertebrae,
Speaker 1: and it's by eight weeks that it that it disappears completely.
Speaker 1: You just suck it back in. Yeah, so it's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like it comes out factory.
Speaker 1: The factory model has the tail and then you lose it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I've definitely read about cases where tail
Speaker 1: also have reappeared in babies born in the in the
Speaker 1: modern world. Oh yeah, yeah, we get into the case
Speaker 1: of of atavism. Ativism refers to traits of distant ancestors
Speaker 1: that reappear in modern day and the most pressing example
Speaker 1: of this is the tail, probably because it's just resonates
Speaker 1: more culturally. It's like the idea of like a human
Speaker 1: with a tail, are they really a human? What's happening here?
Speaker 1: You know, the fear that we're more beastial than than
Speaker 1: enlightened human. Right, And I guess there are a couple
Speaker 1: of types of tails you could be born with. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right, there's a pseudo tail and the much rare,
Speaker 1: quote unquote true human tail. Uh. The pseudo tail doesn't
Speaker 1: have any bones or cartilage. It's just skin and fat,
Speaker 1: and as such it's it's easily removed. Uh. Pseudo tails,
Speaker 1: they just have a superficial resemblance to true tales. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're also a number of growths or cysts that can
Speaker 1: form right at the tip of the tailbone. Some of
Speaker 1: the more um, you know, unpleasant options are actually large tumors, elongations,
Speaker 1: elongations of existing vertebrae. Uh. And then also in cases
Speaker 1: of parasitic twins, there's also it can be some tissue
Speaker 1: that that that forms back there. So your lost twin
Speaker 1: could be a tale essentially, yeah. Uh. And then there
Speaker 1: are the true tales. But the human true tale is uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of a controversial subject. I mean a little bit.
Speaker 1: I've seen it written about as if it's more controversial.
Speaker 1: But then in some sources are more firm on the matter. Um,
Speaker 1: it has nerves and muscles, and sometimes according to some
Speaker 1: you'll find cartilage and vertebrae. Uh. According to the two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve paper Spectrum of Human Tales, a report of
Speaker 1: six cases, they indicate that bones cartilage, uh not a
Speaker 1: chord and spinal cord are lacking in even a true tale.
Speaker 1: As such, a true tale is easily removed surgically without
Speaker 1: residual effects. And it's only you know, rarely is it
Speaker 1: some sort of a family trait. There's only one case
Speaker 1: in you know, in recent history, uh where we where
Speaker 1: it's been reported that they were actually vertebrae in the
Speaker 1: human tale. So by and large, even a true quote
Speaker 1: unquote true tale in a human is not an extension
Speaker 1: of the vertebrate. So it's worth keeping in mind. And
Speaker 1: and it's such it's it's easily removed. So in most
Speaker 1: cases this would not be something that an individual would
Speaker 1: carry around with them, assuming they had adequate access to
Speaker 1: medical care. So we still can't say, one ever, cent
Speaker 1: for sure why we lost the tale. Um, there's some
Speaker 1: you know, convincing theories here, convincing arguments. I mean, essentially,
Speaker 1: we lost it because we did not need it anymore.
Speaker 1: But that of course leads us to the question of
Speaker 1: are we ever going to get tales again? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: just because we're rere evolved to get them back? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in a way, if we still have the
Speaker 1: genetic blueprints somewhere in our DNA about how to make
Speaker 1: a tale, and then said, we're just saying no, don't
Speaker 1: do that anymore. What if we reverse that process and
Speaker 1: said no, by all means build it? You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the to go back to the hyperion reference
Speaker 1: that I made earlier, an orbital environmental gravity environment. Seems
Speaker 1: like that would be a prime example of a case
Speaker 1: where humans might potentially evolve that tale. Right, But you
Speaker 1: don't have to imagine space travel to think that humans
Speaker 1: might get tales again, that's right. We can find discussions
Speaker 1: of human tales and sort of trans human tales in
Speaker 1: the works of Charles Fourier, a French philosopher. He lived
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy two through eighteen thirty seven. Uh also an
Speaker 1: influential early socialist thinker who had a rather substantial impact
Speaker 1: on utopian thinking, so particularly in the utopian societies of
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds. You know this guy. When I
Speaker 1: was reading about him, he gave me some very familiar vibes.
Speaker 1: Realized he was exciting the same st range chords in
Speaker 1: my brain that I got from reading about John Murray
Speaker 1: Spear and our techno religion episode. Indeed, Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: similar time frame as similar sort of futurist visions going
Speaker 1: on strange futurist utopia the people at the time thought
Speaker 1: was very unsettling. Yeah, I mean, and there is a
Speaker 1: guy who he presented a number of ideas that were
Speaker 1: potentially unsettling to people, both in a realistic and in
Speaker 1: a fantastic frame, but also popular to some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was advocating change, and he advocated a utopian
Speaker 1: vision for humanity. He proposed radical advancements in human culture,
Speaker 1: advancements that would change man and his universe. So as
Speaker 1: humans exist at the center of Fourier's universe, elevating ourselves
Speaker 1: to a state of harmony, uh causes the universe to
Speaker 1: follow suit. Like we're the We're very much again the
Speaker 1: center of this universe where the spoke on this wheel.
Speaker 1: And if we elevate ourselves, we literally change everything else.
Speaker 1: So along the same lines as John Murray Spear, he
Speaker 1: didn't just have in mind making a better society, like
Speaker 1: improving the rules that govern how humans interact, but truly
Speaker 1: making a better human being. Yeah, better human being and
Speaker 1: just and like just a better world that would like
Speaker 1: literally like he proposed an age uh, in which the
Speaker 1: polls will have warmed and been rendered fertile by a
Speaker 1: new Aurora borealis, in which wild animal like so so
Speaker 1: utopian is this vision? Wild antibals will will be succeeded
Speaker 1: by their antidotes, such as anti lions and anti sharks
Speaker 1: instead of sharks and lions. Like. That's the level of
Speaker 1: harmony this guy was talking about. Uh. We also we
Speaker 1: would uh, we'd grow to a height of seven feet
Speaker 1: tall and we would live to be about a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four years old on average. Man, if we're
Speaker 1: seven ft tall, the anti lions aren't gonna stand the
Speaker 1: chance against us. I mean, they're just living amongst us.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, dogs and cats living together. But
Speaker 1: he also the anti lion will lay down with anti lamb. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know he also apparently thought that we might
Speaker 1: have tales too. And this is an area that it
Speaker 1: becomes kind of controversial in his history because his critics
Speaker 1: love to focus on it. Uh. And you would see
Speaker 1: the political cartoons essentially in which you would see Fourier
Speaker 1: himself with a tail, and that tail terminating and an eyeball.
Speaker 1: It's a tail with an eyeball, Yes, Yeah, that's so
Speaker 1: good because because that's like a D and D monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I guess you could look around
Speaker 1: corners and stuff and you know they're I mean really
Speaker 1: what just you can list a thousand uses for a
Speaker 1: tail with an eyeball. You know, though, we we talked
Speaker 1: in our Grizzly Bears from Outer Space episode about why
Speaker 1: we think having an eye at the end of an
Speaker 1: appendage is not necessarily the best idea because it's not
Speaker 1: right next to your brain and it can become injured
Speaker 1: by a bodily injury. Yeah, it's not a good place
Speaker 1: to stow an eyeball. I mean unless you had, you know,
Speaker 1: sufficient covering some sort of a sheath that goes over it.
Speaker 1: But maybe Fourier didn't, didn't really think about that. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: so you see two different sizes to this. So again,
Speaker 1: his critics are using this to say this is a ridiculous,
Speaker 1: fantastic idea, this guy's a nutjob, and so at least
Speaker 1: after eighteen forty and again that's after his death, but
Speaker 1: but his followers are still carrying his ideas and holding
Speaker 1: both high. Um. Around this time, his his followers began
Speaker 1: to sort of chime in and say no, he wasn't
Speaker 1: actually saying humans would have tales. It's a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than that, and it it seems one of the
Speaker 1: more you the closer you look at it, like it's
Speaker 1: a little calm and a little calm b like he's
Speaker 1: essentially saying humans will have tales, But it does involve
Speaker 1: a a richer, more elaborate mythos so um according to
Speaker 1: the book's selections from the works of Fourier. Fourier claims
Speaker 1: that he claimed that he was referring to the extra
Speaker 1: terrestrial solarians quote must be endowed with brilliant faculties denied
Speaker 1: to us humans, so essentially gifts that God knew we
Speaker 1: weren't ready for, such as an amazing tale. So these
Speaker 1: solarians factored into four as greater metaphysics, uh, in which
Speaker 1: so called harmoniums, which are these sort of elevated humans
Speaker 1: who have who have come to terms with peace on
Speaker 1: Earth and utopian existence. Uh. They they enjoy multiple lives
Speaker 1: on Earth in addition to extraterrestrial lives beyond our planet,
Speaker 1: in which they benefit from these various physical gifts. So
Speaker 1: Fourier wrote, I have remarked that this superiority is due
Speaker 1: principally to a member of which we are deprived, and
Speaker 1: which comprehends the following properties protection and falling, powerful weapon,
Speaker 1: splendid ornament, gigantic stream, infinite dexterity, cooperation, and support in
Speaker 1: all the bodily motions. In discussing this problem, journalists devoid
Speaker 1: of imagination say that the Silarians resemble the demons of
Speaker 1: the Forest of Saint Anthony, equipped with horns, probosis, claws,
Speaker 1: and tales, and that I wish to create men like
Speaker 1: this upon our globe. Oh so you're putting fourier and
Speaker 1: kind of a anton Jessop. I guess I'm kind of
Speaker 1: following into that that bit. I mean, clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: the man that's wild, it's wonderful, but he he makes
Speaker 1: some good points, right, you know, we would we might
Speaker 1: be better off if we had splendid ornament, gigantic strength,
Speaker 1: powerful weapon. Well, it's it's it's interesting that he's referring
Speaker 1: to many of the things we've discussed here in this episode.
Speaker 1: You know, the all these strengths that the tale has
Speaker 1: for other organisms, so why not us? And and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a false argument. He's makings, he's saying,
Speaker 1: we'd be better off with these these things, these things
Speaker 1: that we evidently did not need to to ascend to
Speaker 1: this level of our evolution. Again, his followers tended to
Speaker 1: downplay this. But according to Charles four A, The Visionary
Speaker 1: and His World by Jonathan Beecher for a certainly did
Speaker 1: right of human tales, and in these rights, and these
Speaker 1: writings were censored, you know later on quote the harmony
Speaker 1: in arm or arquebus is a vertebal tale, a tale
Speaker 1: of immense length and with one d and forty four vertebrae.
Speaker 1: This member is as redoubtable as it is industrious. It
Speaker 1: is a natural weapon. The arquebus terminates with a very small,
Speaker 1: elongated hand, a hand as strong as the clause of
Speaker 1: an eagle or a crab. When a man is swimming,
Speaker 1: the arquebus will help him move as fast as a fish.
Speaker 1: It can stretch to the bottom of the water, carrying
Speaker 1: fish nets and making them fast. With its help, a
Speaker 1: man can reach a branch twelve feet high, climb up
Speaker 1: and down the tree, pick fruit at the very top
Speaker 1: of the tree, and put it in a basket tied
Speaker 1: to the archamen. It serves as a whip and a
Speaker 1: rain to a man who is driving a horse drawn plow.
Speaker 1: It can be used to tame a wild horse. The
Speaker 1: writer can tie up the horse's legs with his arcabus.
Speaker 1: It is infinitely useful, and in the playing of musical
Speaker 1: instruments it doubles a person's manual faculties since its fingers,
Speaker 1: although very small, are extremely stretchable. Hey, we were talking
Speaker 1: about that earlier, were playing music. This guy was was
Speaker 1: ahead of ahead of us, anticipated like every single thing
Speaker 1: we said in this episode. But yeah, so he's talking
Speaker 1: about a prehensile tale that can can do all of
Speaker 1: the things we would expect in an arm or a limb,
Speaker 1: except it's even better. Yeah, and we would use it
Speaker 1: to do all these utopian things like climbing trees and
Speaker 1: being a wild horse, which seems kind of counter to
Speaker 1: the whole harmonium thing, right. I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny that one of the advantages he lists is that
Speaker 1: it can stretch to the bottom of the water carrying
Speaker 1: fish nets. Yeah. I don't know. I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of different time, I guess. Yeah. Again, I
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of like an in turn return to
Speaker 1: Eden sort of vibe at this ride is that we
Speaker 1: would in a sense, we would be we would we
Speaker 1: were returning to our like pre aphe existence, only with
Speaker 1: presumably a utopian human intellect. Wait, hold on, so did
Speaker 1: for you have an idea about why humans did not
Speaker 1: have this amazing archibras already? I believe it's because we've
Speaker 1: sucked because and and again, people who are more familiar
Speaker 1: with for As work can can write in and uh
Speaker 1: and flesh this out force a bit. But my understanding,
Speaker 1: based on the sources I was looking at, is that
Speaker 1: it's essentially humans have a dystopian existence and therefore have
Speaker 1: are not are not privy to these gifts because these
Speaker 1: gifts would be squandered on war and violence and all.
Speaker 1: And it's only if we true might have a tail,
Speaker 1: I would only use it for war. You would you
Speaker 1: just go and like pick our fights and just start
Speaker 1: tail flapping fools left and right. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: xenomorph tail again, it is. Yeah, So yeah, if humans
Speaker 1: had tales, they would essentially be xenomorphs. And we see that,
Speaker 1: I mean a little look at all. You know all
Speaker 1: of our fictional creatures that have tales, they're often using
Speaker 1: miss weapons. Anyway, that's that's our fantasy, that's our dystopian fantasy.
Speaker 1: For for tale usage, Fourier thought differently, though he saw
Speaker 1: the utopian dream here. I can respect that, you know.
Speaker 1: It also brings to mind the two thousand nine novel
Speaker 1: The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, a novel by Russian
Speaker 1: author Victor Pelvin. Are you familiar with this work? No,
Speaker 1: not at all. It's an interesting book. It's um. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it's gonna be sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: underworld that it's actually a very very literate little work
Speaker 1: that speaks to the to to the heart of sort
Speaker 1: of the Russian soul at the time. Now, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this isn't related to that to that werewolf spy novel
Speaker 1: you found at the beach that you were telling you. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's a different that's a far treasure um book.
Speaker 1: This one. This one has more of a literal area slant,
Speaker 1: but it does at the heart concern a love story
Speaker 1: between a an x KGB werewolf and a and a
Speaker 1: two thousand year old ware fox um and the ware
Speaker 1: Fox in particular, she's capable of greater yogur powers since
Speaker 1: she has additional chakras in her tail. Chakras are, of course,
Speaker 1: are those energy points in uh in Eastern metaphysics. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that that go up and down your vertebra.
Speaker 1: So if you had more vertebra you would have more chakras.
Speaker 1: So like a very long snake would have tons of chakras.
Speaker 1: I guess, so yeah, yeah, and you know by that respect,
Speaker 1: you know many of the animals here. What would what
Speaker 1: would do I mean, even though a scorpion doesn't have vertebrae,
Speaker 1: what would it chakras be like? I don't know if
Speaker 1: it were. It's of course that a scorpion is a
Speaker 1: very uh, non yogic creature. It's a very uh, it's
Speaker 1: a very self centered and spiteful organism. So I can't
Speaker 1: imagine it engaging in a lot of meditation. Okay, So
Speaker 1: to finally revisit the question one more time, will humans
Speaker 1: ever evolve tales again? Will we get them back? My
Speaker 1: feeling is, if I'm gonna stop messing around and say
Speaker 1: what I really think, I don't don't really think so,
Speaker 1: because why would that happen. It seems like they would
Speaker 1: either have to be a selection pressure in favor of it,
Speaker 1: like that people who had them would be more likely
Speaker 1: to have more children. I don't see why that would
Speaker 1: be given our level of technology and our you know,
Speaker 1: civilized technological existence. It just doesn't seem like the strong
Speaker 1: you know, survival or reproduction preference for a tale would
Speaker 1: re emerge. But maybe we could get them back just
Speaker 1: through genetic engineering. Yeah, if we just really wanted them
Speaker 1: bad enough, then we could genetically engineer the more. Potentially,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we'd want that surgically augment ourselves
Speaker 1: to create tales. But but even then, that's yeah, the
Speaker 1: genetic would be the only way that we would be
Speaker 1: alteringing the species as opposed to individual members of that species.
Speaker 1: And as we discussed, it's been so long since apes
Speaker 1: lost that tale, you know, twenty million years. By the
Speaker 1: time something post human evolved a tail like that would
Speaker 1: not be a human anymore. That would not be Homo sapiens.
Speaker 1: That would be something else. That's a great point. So
Speaker 1: there's that. But we'd love to hear from everyone else,
Speaker 1: what what do you think will humans ever develop a tail?
Speaker 1: Wherever evolve a tail? And to go back to the
Speaker 1: question at the very beginning of this, uh, this two
Speaker 1: parter would you choose wings or would you choose a tail?
Speaker 1: Which one would you acquire and why would you use it?
Speaker 1: I would probably say neither. Neither. Neither wasn't a choice
Speaker 1: to chase wings and tail. Well, then I'll go with
Speaker 1: the xenomorph tail because you never know when you're gonna
Speaker 1: need it. You never know, all right, So there you
Speaker 1: have it, uh tales. You know, if you didn't listen
Speaker 1: to that first the first part of this, go back
Speaker 1: and listen to it. There are a lot of great
Speaker 1: tale uh examples in that episode as well, and you
Speaker 1: can find all the episodes of the podcast that Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com that is the mothership.
Speaker 1: You'll also find blog post videos, links out to our
Speaker 1: various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to let us know whether you'd
Speaker 1: rather have wings or a tail given all of the
Speaker 1: qualifications we offered at the beginning of the first episode,
Speaker 1: or if you'd like to let us know an interesting
Speaker 1: tail fact or give us feedback on any of the
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about in this episode, you can email
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: does it, how stuff works, dot com