“Future experiments will test the theory that in an ancient evolutionary trade-off, the loss of a tail in humans contributed to the neural tube birth defects,” said study author Dr. Itai Yanai.

However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25 million years ago, when the group split from Old World monkeys. The loss has long been ...

So you don't need a tail as a counterbalance. Pretty disappointing, huh? That being said, you can still see a reminder of a time when our ancient primate ancestors had one. Just look at a human spine.

Humans do not have tails, but do we have “what it takes” for a tail? Hens don’t have teeth, but they have the genes for it. With atavism, it is as if our genomes ... by a loss of existing ...