Cases when babies were born with a tail have been known for a long time and have been repeatedly described. Hundreds of years ago, the tail of a European man caused superstitious fear, and the fate of the unfortunate tailed babies, who recognized themselves as servants of the Devil, was sad.
And at the same time, such a child was very lucky if he was born in India. One of the deities worshiped in Hinduism - the ape-like Hanuman - is described in the great
epic Ramayana. Tailed children were considered sacred messengers of Hanuman. Pilgrims lined up in kilometer queues to just touch the divine tail and receive a blessing ...
The tail in humans is atavism, it is not as functional as in small monkeys. For this, muscles and vertebrae must be present in it, but they are not. It is formed by the germinal tissue in the event that the development of the human embryo deviates slightly from the norm, and this rarely happens. At the same time, the tail in a person as an atavistic process is a clear proof that the tail was undoubtedly present in the distant ancestors of homo sapiens.
Why did they lose him? Look at the behavior of small monkeys (macaques, monkeys). The tail plays the role of the fifth hand for them. He is strong enough to support their light weight, while freeing his limbs. With the growth of the body weight of the monkey, the thickness of the tail muscle rapidly increased until it became an obstacle to existence in conditions where it was not necessary to hang on trees for a long time.
As the monkey-like ancestors of humans evolved (moving on the ground, moving to upright posture on their hind legs), the human tail, as a supporting and balancing organ, "was left without work" and disappeared as unnecessary. Other organs have successfully taken over its function. But its remainder is still present in the human skeleton -
it is the tailbone.It used to be that a person with a tail in the embryonic state reflects the evolutionary process: from the intestinal hydra - through the stage of fish with gills - through the stage of the animal with tail - to, in fact, the person. Serious scientists were sure that this conclusively proves Darwin's theory of the origin of man from the animal world. This is true, however, the development of the embryo has nothing to do with it: from the very first day, it is just a man and no one else.
The tail in a person in the embryo stage is explained by the large number of vertebrae laid in the womb (38 versus 33-34 in an adult) - so to speak, in advance, taking into account its slow development in comparison with other organs. It appears at the turn of the 1st and 2nd months of
embryonic development. Then, during the 3rd month, there is a partial rearrangement of the skeleton with the reduction of "extra" vertebrae. The baby is born with a normal spine. I repeat: cases of the birth of a child with atavism in the form of a tail-shaped process from soft tissues are extremely rare. But if that happened - that's okay. Just the first days of a baby’s life will be marked by a simple surgical operation. Given that the newborn has a high ability to regenerate tissues, such an operation almost always goes without complications.