Evolutionists, please answer this....?

Question

What happend to your tails,(a theory that you evolved from apes) isnt a tail important? If "yes", then why dont you need it anymore, and if "no", then why do animals have it?

Answer 1

Apes don't have tails.

Answer 2

All animals do not have a tail. You might think all cats have it, but the Lynx does not. Rats do, but all rodents don't. Some monkeys do, but apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas) don't. New world monkeys (the cute, small ones), however, do.

For the body to grow a tail, and then to operate it, requires a certain amount of energy. Since we don't have an infinite amount of energy, the only way life can progress is to either share the energy between everything (which produces a creature with lots of organs, functions, limbs etc – but none of which works particularily well). Or you can favor some functions ('important') at the expense of others ('unimportant'). If you can make good use of the tail, then it is obviously important. This is not a conscious choice, it's just a simple consequence of distribution of limited supply.

At some point, however, a change in our species lifestyle meant the tail lost most of its importance (the fact that all Apes lack a tail tells us this happened before we branched off from Gorillas etc). We now have larger brains, so one explanation (there might be several) is that we lost our tail because evolution favored apes whose brains were larger, and had smaller tails (which were quite useless anyway). So we became smarter but were less agile while climbing trees. It was a trade-off that worked out pretty well.

Hope it helps!

Answer 3

First of all humans didn't evolve from apes. Apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor with the family tree splitting off millions of years ago.
A tail can be a help or a hindrance. It can make an animal easier to catch by a predator, in which case the individuals with the shorter tails would have the advantage. Natural selection would eventually lead to smaller and smaller tails until one day, no tail.
On the other hand an animal such as a cat uses it's tail for balance. That is an advantage when climbing a tree in search of prey, such as a bird.

Answer 4

YOU DID HAVE A TAIL BEFORE YOU WERE BORN. Every single human embryo has a tail, but when it becomes a fetus, the tail is absorbed. Sometimes, humans are still born with a soft-tissue tail containing no bone; these are usually removed.


Evolution is a process of mutation over generation. Useful mutations become common; non-useful mutations vanish over time. If a trait is not useful to us as a species, we lose it. Therefore, it's simplest to say that we don't have tails because we don't have any useful need for them. As a ground-dwelling species, we don't need them for hanging on tree branches, and since we don't fly or leap, we don't need them for balance. We have very good hands for swatting flies, so we don't need them for that either. Since we don't need or use tails, any tails our far distant ancestors may have had became useless and were gradually bred out of the species.

Of course, many of our nearest ape relatives also lack tails. (Chimpanzees, Gorillas, etc.)

Do some research to answer your question more thoroughly. Remember, it's not easy to find unbiased internet resources on this subject so alway check as many unrelated sources as possible.

EDIT:
BORNAGAINCHRISTION, I can tell you don't know what you are talking about. A theory in science is not a guess. Theory just means a proven observation with extensive supporting data and research. Hypothesis means guess. If evolutionary science is voodoo don't go to your doctor because much of modern medicine is based on some of the research done by evolutionary scientists in understanding disease and the structure/functions of our bodies/organs.

Answer 5

lol. No. We don't need it anymore. We've evolved to walk upright. Did you know that you still have the reminants of a tail, you just can't see it? What do you think your tailbone is?

Some babies are still born with tails that have to be removed at a later date because they interfere with things like sitting properly. It's a genetic anomaly, not the norm.

Did you know that every child, when in the womb, has a tail? The tail later is lost during development.

Next time you ask a question, do some research on it first.

Answer 6

We would not need it when we became bipedal. Some humans are in fact born with short tails, the longest on record on a homo sapien was less than 8" long. Since it takes energy to support the tissues of a tail, when the tail was no longer needed, it atropheyed, just as the planar muscle is (9% of humans no longer have this, and within the past 100 years, the evidence is that all humans still had it) and the appendix is.

Animals still have a tail because they derive benefit from it. Quadrupeds use their tails heavily for balance and for social interaction. The primates still live in the trees.

Gorillas are a perfect example. They no longer live in the trees, they became ground-dwellers. They no longer have tails because of this.

Answer 7

Not all animals have tails. When we started walking on two legs, we no longer needed the balance a tail gave us--which is the reason why most animals have tails. Try harder and do some research to come up with a better argument against evolution.

Also, just because science hasn't come up with a mechanism to explain the evolution of the eye, for example, (because science takes observable facts and tries to link them together with a theory or explanation), doesn't make it more likely the theory is wrong. Early scientists couldn't explain what causes lightning for the longest time, and the religous attributed it to God's wrath. They weren't right then, it was just that science and technology needed to catch up in order to properly research and explain it.

Answer 8

Show me an oragutang with a tail......

Is a tail important? Yes - it is very important to animals that live in trees - it is used for balance purposes. However, if you will note, we came out of the trees about 4 million years ago....thats why we dont have a tail any longer. Also, you will note that no ape or orangutang or man ( except on occassion, some are born with vestigal tails) has a tail - we dont need it as we dont live in trees and have deveolped an inner ear cannal that covers balance for us.

Monkeys, on the other hand, have tails. Monkeys live in trees.

Answer 9

There's no such thing as an "evolutionist". That being said...

The coccyx or "tailbone" is the remnants of our tail. Some babies are even born today with vestigial tails.

We didn't "lose" our tail. It either provided no advantage in our environment, or proved to be a detriment in some way. Those with smaller tails survived longer, and bred more. Their genes were passed on.

Please, take the time to study the scientific method, and evolution, not "Evolutionism" (whatever that is)

Answer 10

As usual the creationists have no clue what evolution is really all about. Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor...humans did not evolve from apes, big difference.....and if you look at a human skeleton and an apes you'll see that we do indeed still have a tail bone. A recessive remant from our shared ancestors.

Answer 11

definition: apes are monkeys without tails

in point of fact many people point to the tail bone as a vestigial organ, yet it is not. the tail bone has muscles connected to it and supports your innards from sagging down and down..

DO NOT... I repeat DO NOT attempt to remove your tail bone!!!

the number of vestigial organs started around 100 and has been steadily dropping... and now...there are arguably ZERO vertical organs and what was considered junk DNA is likely highly complex error checking and correction and other things we have not dreamed of

of course many myths live on in science... don't be surprised if you run into people who believe the Ontogeny recapitulated Phylogeny where Hackle fraudulently made up fake images of fetus to look like animals in an evolutionary manner... sadly this has been discredited as fraud 150 years ago and lives on in college and high school text books to this day... the 'gil' in a fetus is not a gil and nothing like it...but commonly refered to by it sadly even by the late Carl Sagan who held to this myth