Why humans do not have a tail, scientists found the answer

Some scientists claim that the animals considered to be the earliest ancestors of humans had tails. But why people do not have a tail? Scientists were looking for the answer to this question for a long time. Now they claim to find the answer to that question.

Scientists claim that after the separation of apes from monkeys two to two and a half million years ago, the thing called tail was lost from the branches of the human tree of life. Ever since Darwin's theory of evolution was published, scientists have been trying to figure out why and how this happened. But now scientists have identified at least one important genetic change that can cause such changes.

The research report was published in the UK-based journal Nature on Wednesday. In it, researcher and Broad Institute geneticist Bo Jia wrote, 'We saw a single mutation occurring in a very important gene.'

To carry out the study, scientists compared the genomes of six species of apes, including humans, and 15 species of tailed monkeys. After identifying an important change in this field, scientists began testing their theory.

They used the gene-editing technology CRISPR to determine whether similar mutations occur in mouse embryos. It was found that these mice were born without a tail.

But Jia thinks other genetic changes may play a role in tail loss.

Scientists are also researching another issue. That is, the absence of a tail has facilitated the survival of these predecessors, apes and even humans.

There are various conceptual theories as to why not having a tail is helpful. Some say that humans slowly learned to walk upright because of the lack of a tail.

Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Project, believes that the lack of a tail allowed some apes to adapt to an elongated posture before leaving the trees.

But not all apes still live on land. Orangutans and gibbons are tailless apes that still live in trees. Potts said, the movement patterns of these apes are very different from monkeys. They run to treetops and use their tails for balance.