Scientists have found out how people lost their tails – research

Scientists have discovered a genetic change common to humans and monkeys that caused humans to lose their tails about 25 million years ago.

This is stated in the results of the study, published in the journal Nature.

Unlike most apes, great apes and their close extinct relatives do not have tails. Their coccyx (coccyx) is a remnant of the vertebrae that form the tail in other animals.

In order to investigate the gene that was “responsible” for the development of the tail, geneticist Bo Xia from Harvard University in Cambridge and colleagues analyzed 140 genes involved in the development of the tail.

They discovered that these genes had undergone thousands of changes during evolution.

Bo Xia recalled that in 1927, Ukrainian scientist Nadia Dobrovolska-Zavadska described a type of short-tailed laboratory mouse that she hypothesized had a mutated gene called T, the human equivalent of which is now known as TBXT.

Mice with such mutated genes had short or no tails.

In 2021, together with his colleagues, Xia found that as a result of chemical changes in the monkey’s body, the protein form of the TBXT gene was reduced. Mice that had the TBXT gene added had a number of tail defects, the researchers said.

Xia’s team also suggested that the loss of the tail may have contributed to the monkeys’ ability to walk on two legs and spend less time in trees.

According to anthropologist Gabriela Russo of Stonybrook University in New York, monkeys are not the only primates without tails. Lories, mandrills and some macaques also do not have tails. This suggests that tail loss has evolved several times.

We used to reportedthat the giant apes became extinct, probably due to climate change.