The tail of a person is not a devilish sign, but a reminder of distant ancestors

Случаи, когда младенцы рождались с хвостом, 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 unfortunate tailed babies, recognized as servants of the Devil, was sad.

And at the same time, very lucky such a child, ifHe was born in India. One of the deities honored in Hinduism - the ape-like Hanuman - is described in the great epic Ramayana. Tailed children were considered the sacred envoys of Hanuman. Pilgrims lined up in kilometer long queues just to touch the divine tail and receive blessings ...

People’s tail is an atavism, it’s notas functional as small monkeys. To do this, it must be present muscles and vertebrae, but they are not. It is formed by germinal tissue in the event that the development of a human embryo slightly deviates from the norm, and this happens rarely. At the same time, the tail of a person as an atavistic process is a clear evidence that the long ancestors of homo sapiens had a tail, no doubt.

Why did they lose him?Look at the behavior of small monkeys (macaques, monkeys). The tail plays for them the role of the fifth hand. He is strong enough to withstand their low weight while freeing limbs. With increasing monkey body weight, the muscle thickness of the tail rapidly increased until it became a hindrance to existence in conditions where it did not take long to hang on the trees.

As the ape-like ancestors of humans evolve(movement on the ground, transition to upright walking on hind legs), the tail of a person as a supporting and balancing body "remained without work" and disappeared as unnecessary. Other organs successfully assumed its function. But his remnant is still present in the human skeleton - this is the tailbone.

It used to be that a man with a tail inthe embryonic state reflects the process of evolution: from the intestinal cavity hydra - through the stage of fish with gills - through the stage of an animal with a tail - to, in fact, man. Serious scientists were convinced that this irrefutably proves Darwin's theory of the origin of man from the animal world. This is true, but the development of the embryo has nothing to do with it: from the very first day of his life he is just a human being and no one else.

The tail of a person in the embryo stage is explaineda large number of vertebrae laid in the womb (38 vs. 33-34 in an adult) - in advance, so to speak, 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 restructuring of the skeleton with the reduction of "extra" vertebrae. The baby is born already with a normal spine. I repeat: the cases of the birth of a child with an atavism in the form of a tail-shaped process from soft tissues are extremely rare. But if it happened like this, nothing terrible. Just the first days of the baby's life will be marked by a simple surgical operation. Given that the newborn has a high capacity for tissue regeneration, such an operation almost always takes place without complications.