Humans Don't Walk Around With Tails Likely Because of This Genetic Mutation

Millions of years ago, our ancient ancestors, the apes, lost their tails. A new study shows how .as they bolt through the branches, the tail is an advantageous adaptation for monkeys. But why wasn’t the tail beneficial for our ancient ancestors, the apes? Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, apes lost their tails, and in turn helped humans become humans.

Searching for the origins of taillessness in apes — the group that today contains chimps, gorillas, humans, and more — Xia and colleagues compared the genes of tailless apes and tailed monkeys, identifying at least one of the genetic mutations that led to the tail’s loss, in a new study published in, the apes split from the monkeys and cast off their tails.

some scientists say that the absence of a tail simplified life on the ground for our ancient ancestors, paving the way for the upright, bipedal movement of modern humans. “It has long been speculated that tail loss in hominoids,” including apes and humans, “contributed to orthograde and bipedal locomotion, the evolutionary occurrence of which coincided with the loss of the tail,” Xia and colleagues write in their paper. “The specific evolutionary pressures relating to the loss of the tail in hominoids are not clear, although they are probably involved in enhanced locomotion in the transition to a non-arboreal lifestyle.

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