Tails

Part of the Extreme Mammals exhibition.

If humans still had tails, the world might look a little different. But our ancestors lost their tails about 18 million years ago. Today, humans retain only the shortest remnants--just a few hidden bones at the base of the pelvis. Many other mammal tails are remarkably long, though, and some have a range of unusual uses.
 
The howler monkey of northern South America has a prehensile, or grasping, tail the same size as its body--about three feet--that it uses for navigating its native cloud- and rainforests.
 
The woolly monkey, a central South American tree-dweller, occasionally strolls through the forest on the ground, using its tail as a brace--nature's built-in tripod.

tails1
The howler monkey’s dextrous, prehensile tail is about 3 feet (1 meter) long—as long as the rest of the animal’s body is tall.
Morales/AGE Fotostock
tails2
Tree-dwelling woolly monkeys sometimes walk on the ground on their hind legs, using their prehensile tails as a brace.
Biosphoto/Cyril Ruoso/Peter Arnold, Inc.
tails3
Nicknamed the “honey bear” and belonging to the same family as the raccoon, the arboreal kinkajou eats fruit, insects, small animals—and honey.
StockByte/AGE Fotostock
tails4
The kinkajou lives in the forests of Mexico, Central America and northern South America.
Superstock/AGE Fotostock

 

Fun Facts

  • In some cases, prehensile tails have a bare, sensitive pad along one side of the tip, for better sensing and gripping. Using their tails, these arboreal animals can hang or swing from tree to tree.
  • Mammals use tails for everything from swimming to balancing while hopping or running to serving as the mammal-equivalent of a sleeping bag: tree squirrels wrap themselves in their bushy tails to sleep.
  • An extinct animal called a creodont, found in Green River, Wyoming, had a tail that contained 51 separate bones. Scientists reason that in living mammals, a tail containing many vertebrae is more flexible and therefore more likely to be prehensile. Because of this and other evidence from the tail's anatomy, scientists think this ancient carnivore had a grasping, prehensile tail, too.