Why Do Animals Have Tails?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Most animals with a backbone possess a tail, and they use them for all sorts of purposes. There isn’t just one reason for having a tail, it all depends on what the animal is adapted for.
Join Our Discord Server: / discord
►Like and subscribe for more videos!
►Subscribe: bit.ly/1MKmgG0
►Follow me on Twitter: / bengthomas42
►Like my page on Facebook: / bengthomas42
►Follow me on Instagram: bit.ly/1PIEagv
►Follow me on Google+: bit.ly/1ObHejE
Sources:
scienceline.ucs...
www.scienceabc...
en.wikipedia.o...
www.popsci.com...\
en.wikipedia.o...
www.sharksinfo....
www.cat-health-...
books.google.c...
en.wikipedia.o...
books.google.c...
books.google.c...
pets.thenest.c...
en.wikipedia.o...
www.mnn.com/ea...
en.wikipedia.o...
en.m.wikipedia...
en.m.wikipedia...
whatsinjohnsfr...
Snakes are just tails. They are free tails. They are strong, independent tails that don’t need no body.
That's punny.
Ironically, they are actually about 80% body, with only a really tiny tail at the end of them.
Actually snakes have two spurs on their undersides which are all that is left from their legs. After the spurs, their very short tail (in comparison to the body at least) begins.
Flufux whooooosh
Nope rope
I had an iguana. He used to whip me with his tail. It hurt like a bitch.
Hippos use their tail to fling a cloud of poop, communicating their presence to others.
Iguana tail whip is such a fucking irritating thing
I can't come up with a comparison between hippos and a social human group, that's just hilarious.
Iguana used tail whip! It was super effective!
I think you're lil buddy was asserting his dominance
Many of my coworkers do the hippo thing, but verbally.
Someone with special knowledge on prehistory and biology ALSO cites his sources?
*CLICK*
Haha, thanks so much! We always try to cite our sources in every video we make :)
@ this guy is asking the real question.
Mauro Molinero I hope you get it soon man. Keep hanging on.
@ imagin if they awnsered 1 year after lol
Why? Are you in turn going to cite a general RUclips video on general consensus concepts for prehistory and biology findings? The video would have more content on citations then on what was to be communicated. The video is presented for entertainment, a presentation, for a wide audience. Get a grip.
Fun fact: When a cat goes to greet another cat they raise their tail up straight up in the air and keep it up as it walks towards the other. The idea is they use it to signify to the other, "Hey! look at me." Then walks up.
Because cats are cool.
So like a Sims character thingy?
Fun fact: cats aren’t real pets.
@@seannotconnery8191 Because we're their pets, we just don't know it
Gecko's use their tails to store nutrients, much like the humps of a camel. A fat tail means a healthy gecko, this of course makes losing their tail to a predator (as lizards are known to do) a bit of an issue, albeit still preferable to being eaten.
Aside from that they also use their tails to help stick to any surfaces they may be climbing by pressing it against that surface
Very nice, but you missed the obvious reason of defense like in Komodo dragons or ankylosaurus
And alligators
most lizards
Iguanas
Idk y but i thought mosa even though i know ankylosaurus
Also Komodo is not a dragon
Also stegosaurs
A tale of a tail.
Nice XD
Haha funny and hulararas
@@mozart7074 hulararas
If only I were a Saiyan 🙁
lol
And yet, the fact that Goku and Vegeta can live perfectly fine without tails contradicts their evolutionary need for a tail in the first place.
@@JanetStarChild their tails make them get 10x stronger on a full moon or artificial one that they can create. saiyan tails make them a lot stronger, this is especially useful for a warrior race where their lifestyle is all about fighting.
For more information ask Vegeta.
@@jevonmcpherson8054
Yes, I'm familiar with all that cartoonish nonsense, but it still has no bearing on their ability to live day by day. Most animals, if you remove their tail, it cripples them severely, but saiyans suffer no physiological impairments. It almost seems like a useless vestigial part of their anatomy (outside of all that supernatural bullcrap).
@@JanetStarChild I sometimes wonder why hamsters and least weasels still have tails. They're really small and don't seem to be used for anything. I once watched a program in which a weasel lost its tail and didn't seem to be crippled by it.
Apparently, fish has been found to use their tail as a weapon, specifically a whip. It’s really crazy how powerful it is as it can shatter other smaller fish.
Ah, it seems you're talking about the thresher shark.
@@Serpenfishil there is also a group of Fish known as Surgeonfish(AKA Tangs) who use scalpel like Spurs on their tails to defend themselves
@@seandewar47 yes but the original person's comment is talking about a fish with a whip tail, and the only known fish with that type of tail is the thresher shark, at least to my knowledge.
Here's a drinking game:
Take a shot of water every time he says tail in order to keep your tail hydrated.
That's funny because I was looking for a video I could use as a drinking game, like now!!
Having a head on the front of a four-legged thing makes it intrinsically front-heavy. Even though a tail is lighter than a head, its length lets it function as an effective counter-weight to the skull.
I've wondered why mammalian tails have, on average, been smaller than reptiles in terms of tail weight to body ratio, but that muscle you mentioned answered it. Pretty neat!
All the animals: being nature and doing nature animal things
German shepherd: I HAS FLOWERPOT
Surprised you didn't mention the other Function Tails serve: Defense, like how lizards and Some dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and the Ankylosaurs use them as a weapon or how a lizard can use their tails as a Distraction by detaching them
Lol Imagine one of our fingers falling off when we feel threatened
@@queenditty2783 lol
@@queenditty2783 if someone is holding my hand trying to pull me away, and could detach it, and have it grow back later, hell yeah
What is Lol
@@munibrahman291 Laugh Out Loud
You forgot to mention that if they use tail whip it lowers the enemies defense
You forgot tail slap too
Prudhvi Biruda you missed the joke
What if they bite your tail ouch
@@Squared_Table tail slap is also a pokemon move iirc
haahahahhaa
Me when I see a fluffy cat tail: *poke*
Cat: *So you have chosen death.*
That porpoise joke made my day.
Haha, glad you liked it :D
What was the porpoise of it?
"Pff, who cares!"
1AM:
"Wait, why do they-?!"
It's funny because now is 1AM
Its 1:26 am here
Actaully yesterday i asked myself this question and Yt was like "I have your answer!" finally Yt does me a favour xD
"contempt"
Yeah. Cats can feel that.
Good video, though I was expecting a different one: I thought this video would explain the phylogenetic tree of the tail, how it was first used in fish and then how it changed over time, leading to the different kinds of tails we see nowadays. Your video should rather be called "For what purposes do animals use their tails?".
you forgot dinosaurs that use tails for defense like stegosaurus and ankilodon
some mammals also used it for defense, some glyptodons
Ankylosaurus.
Shut up I hate you
@@EmperorHerpes ???
Javier Hernandez calm down ur beans
Some humans are born with tails. The doctors clip them off after birth.
They aren't true tails though since they have no bone or muscle, they're pretty much just long skin tag things.
bro i just throw up in my head. the doctors clip them off . but they're bot tail but actually very long skin tags.
@@ghostie_kat9762 you threw up in your head coz of that? Wait until you hear what they do to penises lol.
Well thought out and thorough, yet still captivating. Educational RUclips needs more videos like this. Outstanding work!
Thank you so much, I'm very happy you think this! :D
I think your assessment on the cat's use of a tail is incorrect.
Balance can be more cheaply obtained by the hyper-developement of the vestibular system instead of a more costly tail (humans being the notable example). It's more likely that cat tails have evolved as a counter "weight" to allow the animal to rapidly change directions during the final stage of an ambush.
He's right, but you're right too about the counterweight. The vestibular system is really complex, so that would be less likely to evolve than a tail, the vestibular system can't help you when you're falling either, only tell you that you're falling over.
The vestibular system is a sensor that warns you that you are out of balance. The tail is the hardware used by cats to regain the balance.
That is basically balance tho
I wish we still had tails.
Something flexible and strong like some tree primates.
We could use it as a 3rd arm to grab something like a bag, help close a door, hold on to something........
A good excuse to play god
Feel kinda left out not having a tail 😢
I would like to have a prehensile tail it would help alot while welding
I wish i had a tail...
You're entirely mistaken on the count of "we lost it because we didn't use it." This is a very Lamarckian (wrongheaded) view of evolution that hasn't held water for well over a century. You don't magically lose things when they no longer pose an advantage in a population else there would be many things (appendix, gallbladder, body hair, to list a few) that humans would no longer possess. Rather, there would need to exist a negative pressure against selecting for that genetic feature (a tail being detrimental to human activity/survival, breeding pressures, etc.) much as is the case with other traits many humans have lost (wisdom teeth for instance).
Even if you could definitively demonstrate there was no negative pressure against tail selection, the fact that we no longer possess them would be a random chance of genetics (which is what a shift on a neutral trait is). This, at best, would be because of happenstance and have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that "we weren't using them." Your assumption is predicated on a false notion of "use it or lose it." and wrongly implies humans were active agents in their own evolutionary process. Again, the only way in which we would be agents in such a thing is if there were breeding pressures in place that negatively selected for tails.
@Gap Most people don't, actually.
@Gap You come from Earth, presumably, which means you're one of the unlucky sorts. About less than a third of people actually have them. There's no environmental pressure here per-se (wisdom teeth actually serve an important function in a pre-dental society), most people simply lost it because it was a benign trait with no pressure to keep it.
@Gap Literally based on genealogical studies, genetic studies of different ethnic populations, combined with the literally billions of human skeletal remains we have access to and has nothing to do with self-reporting at the dentist.
You clearly have no leg to stand on and no clue what you're talking about, let alone where the statistics are from. Why are you arguing about a subject you haven't studied in literally any capacity?
@Gap You literally have 0 understanding of anything genetic if you're going to discount the entire genetic history of a species. That's even a worse misunderstanding than the Lamarckian view adopted in this video.
| Rather, there would need to exist a negative pressure against selecting for that genetic feature
If you think about it, there does in most cases. Energy cost of maintaining it, growing it in the first place, etc
CRISPR human trials underway.
Me: Hi, can I get my tail back?
Because it allows them to transform into Oozarus, duh.
This isn't even my final form.
I would use my tail as my third hand and scrub my back with it
That's a really good idea.
The moment we started losing our tails was the moment we failed as a species
*sad furry noises*
Its for the best. Imagine people using it as dildo's
@@executor2056 true
Nope, you're telling tall tales 😋
@@executor2056 People will use anything for dildos anyways.
Because nun chucks, how ever you spell it.
Just grab the tail and you’ve got a weapon.
I yote my cat yesterday to fight my brother.
b r u h
Yes
White tailed deer, and other animals with similar coloration also use their tail to communicate with predators. The white underside of the tail is flashed at the predator while the deer hops and bucks, communicating that: 1 the deer knows the predator is there, and 2 that the deer is healthy and attempting to chase it would be a waste of the predator's energy.
Why do animals have tails? "So I can knock everything off the low tables and make your legs hurt"
Tails are just animal fingers. A bushy long finger. A scaly finger. A long finger.
why do bobcat and lynx have short tails if it is for balance?
Because they don't need a large amount of counterweight to balance well
Theyre tails would freeze in cold weather
"Why do animals have tails?" sounds like the sort of question an inquisitive young child would ask; thousands of parents (and teachers) would thank you boys for this video.
Is one way of tail movement more effective at swimming? (Mammal vertical vs fish horizontal)
Nathan Risher I have always asked myself this
As far as I'm aware, part of the purpose of the tails is to create a whirlpool-like circular motion in the water, which pushes the animal forward. If the edge of the body of water is near the animal, it disturbs the motion and slows it down. So near the surface or the bottom, a horizontal tail movement would be more efficient. If there are hundreds of meters of water in all directions I have no idea which one would be more efficient.
The source for this is a swimming article I read like a year ago, and I think it presented this as a theory, not fact, so take this with a grain of salt.
iirc the mammals tail gives them a better propulsion and control to get out of the water oppossed to fish, you know like how dolphins can jump and go in again, and useful for seals to get out of water to catch things or just get to land or an ice block
@@MrYoyoshi9 this was a very interesting question, and I think your explanation might be right, especially since dolphins and whales Need to breathe AIR, so going up and down is more important.
Kareza Alonso thats a smart observation
This is great work. I feel better just knowing there are people out there like you. Gives me hope for humanity.
RUclips needs more people like you making videos. Fantastic!! Citations? Are you kidding me? My college instructors would LOVE you!! Seriously; so well thought out, entertaining(without being tediously informative), and fun!! You are now on my very short list of subscribed!!
Imagine if we still have tails?
Its kinda hard to imagine moving it
Adventure Fighter yes its wierd if you had it you would be able to move it like a finger
The tail pretty much move it self but sometimes animal move it and you could hold a coffee mug with a tail
@ now i feel like a 3iq human
Ikr I'm always wondering how we would be able to even move it if we had one, like??? How would that feel though and how do animals control it? Sooo weird.
But wait we dont have fur so it will be like monkeys but without fur
A whacking tail in dogs just indicates excitement, not pure happiness. If a dag is happy it gets excited, but it is not exclusive the reason they do. This can actually be dangerous to people, who confuse these things. If you touch an excited dog confusing them to be happy it most likely will bite you.
In addition to that: cats wiggle their tail in different ways to indicate different things. Big swifts mean aggression, tiny dancing of the tip means curiosity and friendlyness
In conclusion: if you don't want to be hurt by them just don't aproach them: if they want to be touched they come forward to you, if not they will stay away from you. Most animals prefer fleeing over fighting
Going to touch a dog like that would be a violation of their personal space, I personally think it's better to just let the dog (even if it's your own dog) approach you instead and keep a certain level of distance to allow free movement for the dog and avoid making him feel trapped or cornered.
Nobody likes when someone abruptly touches you, Why would we expect a dog to like it? Treat the dog witn the exact same basic respect you would treat someone else and that makes everything easier.
davidcr you’re the type of person that thinks you should let your pet pick it’s gender and gives your cat vegan food
Great video man! Im really thankful I found your channel by a comment you left on a video :D
Haha thanks, I'm glad you were able to find me :)
FIRST
crocodiles use their tails to swim
I feel like having a tail would be dope tho imagine using the tail to hold a cup of coffee while doing our work.like damn
Animals could do that lucky them but how do they move their tails
@@mickeymouse-qm4cy animals like monkey and chameleons have nerves and sensory organs in their tails, acting like a third limb. Fish tails are connected to their spine. Mammals like cats and dogs don’t have as much muscles as monkeys but they do and they are located at the base of the tail, allowing them to move them for communication.
Also, I am the last person to complain about having tails but if we did have then then do we lay down or sit
I want a tail. A bushy one at that.
Great video. I think the only uses for a tail you may have forgotten is them being used as defensive mechanisms as well as a fat supply/food storage for tougher times. EX. Komodo dragons and basically all smaller lizards.
Be careful of the use of expressions like "in order to" related to how or why some aspect of a living thing evolved. Right? ;)
BFDT Yes, better to say, "which allows them to," or "as an adaptation to."
I had the same thought. Not inaccurate but definitely clumsy.
Isn't the only real reason that all vertebrates have tails, or remnants of a tail, because the last common ancestor of all tetrapods possessed a tail?
I just accidentally stepped on my cat's tail and I started wondering this
Tails on land animals exist primarily for balance. Some have fulfiled the role of a fifth limb, being prehensile, and some have adapted to be show pieces - either as a threat display or an attractant for mating.
Thought I would hear about ring-tailed lemurs using them so that no one in the group gets lost.
4:11 4:20 god I love pangolins!
Title should “Why do most animals have tails?”
Not really it is fine as it is
And pigs? The curly ones.
technically it's for swimming, as that's what it was used for originally, everything that uses it for something else simply re-adapted a pre-existing structure for a new purpose
Dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus and Tuojiangosaurus used their tails with spikes or armor on them for defense.
Dang I wish I still had a tail. But I'm keeping these wings
North American Opossums don't actually have prehensile tails. It often looks like they do because they will hold onto branches with their back legs but they're generally not very good climbers and stay on the ground. The tail probably serves a similar purpose as in rats.
What I'm hearing is that human's got the short end of tail-- I mean, stick. All the other animals probably laugh at us for not having one anymore, but then they remember we've gradually devastated their habitats and pushed many of them to the brink of extinction, and then all parties involved get sad.
It is not obvious to my why humans would have lost tails simply by moving to out of the trees. I saw a number of other functions we could have performed with it. We could have used it for balance or for a silent alert, or for stabilization like the woodpecker, or display, or even just as a third hand. Sometimes I think you just uncritically repeat what some scientist said without asking question.
Try to think of an animal without a tail.
It's probably harder than you originally thought. The first animal I could think of was an octopus and that's not even a vertebrae.
Guinea pigs, capybaras and hyraxes.
Homo sapiens
There's a yo mama joke in there somewhere
The thing that you leave out of your narrative is the that most body features are the result of circumstantial or coincidences defaults in genetic mutations .
Atleast humans particularly males retain the tail infront of their bodies
It’s pretty soft too
Until..... you see hot wamen
Great video, awesome research and very good presentation
So in the top of the torso is located the head, and the most intelligent and useful place to locate functioning members is the closest parts to the head, those are the extremities. But the bottom of the body is empty, that's by animal have developed some kind of extremities and have given it some secondary usages.
Dogs are not necessarily happy when they wag their tail. It can and often it is and atleast it's not "still and stalking", but sometimes it's also a sign of (over-)excitement/stress. This is a slightly dangerous simplification in my opinion because people then choose to approach a dog without checking other signs the dog is giving, maybe stressing the dog out too much and end up getting hurt or scared (and then blaming the animal).
Can't believe you forgot the Thagomizer
I have a tail...Below my Outer Stomach
Pretty stupid question. In the same way, one could ask why animals have legs, or why animals have necks. Because they are animals, they move and use various moving parts for movement. Same for the tail - it is an additional moving limb it is useful which is good for survival. It is much more interesting why some animals, like humans and apes lost their tail.
Blew my fucking mind with that mammalian water animals and fish tail fact.
Like in my head I knew I just never drew the comparison that mammals evolved to have tails to go up and down as oppose to fish just wiggling side to side.
I'm doing fiction novel writing research and this video was a well of good info and leads to further research. Thanks for sharing!
whats with keeping balance while running fast?
or holding stuff with the tail
a third arm that helps you out balancing cant be wron not even on the ground
2 things, the great apes, chimps, gorillas and orangutans do not have tails yet spend most of their lives in the trees. Many species of Monkeys do not have tails either, suggesting tails are not necessary for life in the trees. When it comes to fish and more especially cetaceans, is it more likely that these are not tails but an analogy to legs?
And just so you know, your videos are consistently high quality.
Could humans re evolve tails ie take some humans and put them in a dense forest for like 2 million years will we get out tails back?
No. Those creatures wouldn't be what we could call human. A better question would be to ask whether some eventual species descendent from humans could have tails, and the answer to that is, of course. All it would take is for an individual born with a mutation for having a tail (which are born several times a year) to produce more offspring and/or offspring which reproduce more robustly than normal humans.
No, we couldn’t evolve into anything like that. And I don’t mean a bullshit answer like “we wouldn’t be humans anymore” or @we wouldn’t call those humans” the answer is just simply no. It is mostly agreed upon that we won’t evolve much at all in our current environment. We have no need for a tail, so we won’t evolve one. Also, no, it’s not a s simple as a mutation. Human literally can’t be supported by a tail. Our entire anatomy would have to be re built. We lost our tails way before we became bipedal, and we just aren’t compatible at all
@@callmecart9925 we will evolve tails when eventually we start genetically fricking around with things we probably shouldn't.
@@LeoStaley
They would be humans, just not our specific species, just like Homo neandertalensis or Homo erectus are a different human species than us. We would do something to specify that they aren't our species when we talk about them, like calling ourselves "Sapiens" & calling them "Tail Bois" or something.
Yes, but I don't see how forests favour tails in humans.
There would have to be an advantage for a tiny bump on the end of your spine for this to get started.
Perhaps if everyone turns into furries this could happen via sexual selection.
Tail wagging is a sign of general excitement in dogs. They may do it when afraid or acting aggressive also, in addition to glee.
do you think it's cool for humans to have a tail
it would be handy why soldering headphone cables lol
If we had tails, we could have used them to smack people
Pretty sure a peacocks display is actually made up of it's back feathers, and it's smaller brown tall lays underneath
In the hentai dictionary, tails are used for *[REDACTED]*
More specifically, the furry type
4:10 OH MY GOD A SANDSHREW!
Can you do a video on how invertebrates evolved stinging parts? Like scorpions, wasps, etc.
Arthropods do use stinging a lot
This is kind of a random comment, but I think cetacean locomotion is more elegant than fish/amphibian/reptile locomotion. Something about the symmetry of the up-down undulations is just more pleasing to the eye than the left-right motion breaking the animal's plane of symmetry with each stroke. Side-to-side motion, no matter how sleek, just seems clumsy by comparison.
Cheetahs use their tail to assist in changing direction whilst running at speed. Egrets use their tail to create an umbrella to create a shadow over water when hunting.
I'm pretty sure it was NOT because we don't needed them that we lost it.
It might be cuz land animals with long tails usually are predators, since prey with long tails are easily caught.
It would came amazingly handy now that we are bipedals though
If we humans still have tails, parkour will be a whole new level
You missed two important purposes of tail: containing penis and protecting cloaca like that of turtles/tortoises or saving nutrition.
the hippopotamus' tail's function was too crass to mention?
What is it?
@@dcarter020809 They use their tails to spread their poo all over the place. Look up "Hippo Poo Spray" or "Why hippos are spraying their dung like agricultural machines?" ... It's a kind of warning signal to stay away.
If you know the saying "when shit hits the fan", well, they do a good example of that.
Normies: why do animals have tails?
Nerds: why don't we have tails?
Probably forgot that tails could also be used as weapons, as demonstrated by various animals throughout time, with the most diverse range of tail weapons in vertebrates coming from herbivorous dinosaurs, developing clubs, spikes, and even whips at the ends of their tails
Some invertebrates actually are closely related to vertebrates like sea squirts
So, fish used them for swimming, and any species that slithered, climbed and hanged had no evolutionary pressure to loose it's tail as creatures evolved from the sea to the land . As well as, of course, a counter balance for running.
However, a reason overlooked in this video, which has a large evolutionary aspect to it, is that the larger land animals, that don't use it for counter balance, horses, wildebeests, etc, have a distinct advantage with using the tail to "wipe their bums".
Thus keeping bacteria and infection away from that vulnerable area. You might see it at the zoo next time you go. As any creature had less and less a physical locomotion use for a tail, the ones that had zero tail, would have had to contend with more infection.
Also a even more direct evolutionary pressure for species that smell eachother's behinds while selecting mates...well you can see why it would be a better option to have a clean area back their. Funnily enough, that probably has just as much effect on the creatures evolution as preventing bacteria.
Godzilla: use a tail as a weapon💀💀💀
Why does a cow shake tail??
Because tail doesn't shake the dang cow.
...balance for animals.... propulsion for fish or aquatic animals....or a rudder (steering mechanism in the air) for birds....
Since being bipedal reserves energy, in a given time, cheetahs could be the first to evolve bipedal walking and running. They’d likely only do this after running after prey due to the decreased speed we get on two instead of four legs. Imagine a cheetah that chases down a gazelle, fails, and decides to run bipedal and kill the gazelle.
I still refuse to believe that rails are necessary for land animals, except for the ones whose tails are big, heavy and used for attacking. Ridiculous. It’s just a long thing at their back that serves no purpose.
Crocodiles use their tails to catapult their bodies out of the water to catch the prey. They don't spend much time on land at all. They have their tail for swiming under water and speeding up very qucik to "jump" out of the water and grab their prey. It's not a counterweight for walking on land, like the T-Rex tail.