What-if humans were born with tails

Whether we were created by the Almighty, or whether it was evolution, and the process of elimination, that has left us with no more than the stump of a hamster, have you ever wondered how our lives would be affected if we were born with tails? A mere detail you may think, but I can assure you that it would come with some serious consequences.

Right from the start we would run into problems trying to put a nappy on the whippersnapper with that darn tail in the way. Handy though for pulling the rascals away from the stuff they are not supposed to do! And a life saver when you have two toddlers running in opposite directions; just grab them by their built-in reins!

The chances are that not all tails would be the same either! They would be different, like noses, and come in an endless array of shapes and sizes. The tail would be just one more thing to get our knickers in a twist about - and knickers would not look the same either!

If we were born with tails, there would be shops entirely dedicated to the appearance and the wellbeing of your tail. There would be tail manicures for the discerning gentleman and for glamour girls. Tips with brushes and tips with bells would be on offer, tail extensions, as would tail curlers and tail straighteners. Also, there would be pills you could take to stop your tail from twitching when you did not want it to and pills you could take to make your tail twitch, even though your particular tail had no natural inclination to twitch at all.

Not everybody would be as concerned with their tail as you and I might be. Some would neglect taking proper care of their elongated spinal cord, some would tuck it away as a sign of their modesty and others would even have theirs removed altogether, as a mark of decency in civilised society. Whole cultural realms would be marked out by the way people embrace or reject the fact that nature had given them a tail.

Design would not be what it is today. Creators of furniture would have to consider the tail. Would it curl over to the right or to the left on this model? Every pair of trousers - assuming you did not belong to a cult that had the tail removed at birth - would have to provide an extra opening. In cold climates there would have to be an extra sleeve or a provision like a pocket to accommodate it.

Books would be written on the subject and libraries would have entire sections designated to the tail. But not just in general! Psychologists would be writing doctorates on how the state of our mental health affected the behaviour of the tail and, adversely, on the impact that the behaviour of tails has on the human mind. Scholars would be arguing over which came first, the chronic twitch of the tail or the nervous disposition.

Books would also be written on tail reading, how tail behaviour and tail reflexes could be interpreted to reveal aspects of a person’s personality and hidden intentions. We know from feline and canine tail behaviour that this is the case. Only the variety of movements, and indeed the variety of intentions in humans, is of such a vastly more complex nature that universities all over the world would have to offer ‘tailology’ as a major subject.

And quite apart from all that intellectual intercourse among learned professionals, there would also be common folklore and the romantic view of the tail. Throughout the history of art, lovers would be portrayed with their tails entwined. The moods of great historical paintings would be set by soldiers with their tails hanging limply between their legs, as they returned defeated from famous battles. By contrast they would be up in the air when battles were won, or on occasions of great achievements and accomplishments.

Sports would of course be hugely affected as it would be of considerable disadvantage in, say the discipline of swimming, while on the other hand it could be of great advantage to have a strong tail when wrestling or at activities that require a good sense of balance.

Just like clowns, animal acts and juggling are part of any Circus show, it would be standard for any Circus, worth its salt, to have special tail acts - you would come to expect it! In fact, almost every circus performance would incorporate the tail in some way or other.

Do you sense that after engaging in this process of ‘what-if’ at some length, the question begs whether we were in fact intended to have tails? Was it an evolutionary or divine oversight that left us without them? Are we somehow disadvantaged for not having them, and should we in fact rise-up and demand to have tails? We could say that we have a human right to a tail and that, in the absence of nature giving us one, we should demand to have this rectified by surgery and with subsidies from our governments?

I bet you never previously realised just how disadvantaged you are without a tail!