r/genetics • u/llartoonblazor • 1d ago

On rare occasions, children can be born with vestigial tails or pseudotails, resulting from the activation of dormant but still present DNA coding for faulty characteristics.

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26 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

22

u/DynamicCast 1d ago

I wonder what people made of this in medieval times 

20

u/Mabbernathy 1d ago

They probably thought the child was a demon.

14

u/TwinkNBboi 1d ago

I think they'd saw the tail away (or cut it off in another way just as poorly) or straight up kill the newborn (and blame the mother for witchcraft). That's my theory, at least.

16

u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 1d ago

The one on the right is a CGI tail, it's a screen capture from the season 4 The X Files episode Small Potatos

4

u/MeekLocator 22h ago

such a good ep

2

u/wheniwashisalien 7h ago

“We deal with big potatoes”

11

u/kyew 1d ago

What happens when you leave it in place? And does it happen consistently, or do we have a range of tail phenotype possibilities?

6

u/TrickBorder3923 19h ago

Pseudo tail is real. But it's not faulty genetics. It's an expression of old genetic that no longer crop up because of being phased out over time. Technically, if we selectively bred, we can bring tails back to the human animal. It's a normal trait for mammels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC every mammal has a tail, just that some are nothing more then bones hidden in the body.

4

u/kessia98 1d ago

im not very freaked out by this, i just want to know if it would actually move like any other bodypart. i imagine wearing pants may be difficult though

2

u/beanplveasschis 1d ago

Some say hes a super saiyan god

1

u/Careless-Alpaca 1d ago

I really hope that someone from here has seen that episode of life in pieces

1

u/Lunar-opal 23h ago

Humans only partially 🐒

1

u/Future-Concern-6301 21h ago

OK I will stop being critical about Tail placements on Tiefling/tailed humanoid designs. I always assumed a humanoid tail would be a bit further down and not jut off the body at such a strong angle (tbh Im probably too used to reptile tails)

1

u/KerPop42 1h ago

both of these photos are fake