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The prehensile-tail of a mantled howler monkey. A prehensile tail is the tail of an animal that has adapted to grasp or hold objects. [1] Fully prehensile tails can be used to hold and manipulate objects, and in particular to aid arboreal creatures in finding and eating food in the trees.
A white-headed dwarf gecko with tail lost due to autotomy. Autotomy (from the Greek auto-, "self-" and tome, "severing", αὐτοτομία) or 'self-amputation', is the behaviour whereby an animal sheds or discards an appendage, [1] usually as a self-defense mechanism to elude a predator's grasp or to distract the predator and thereby allow escape.
In this gait, the tail and the forelimbs form a tripod while the hind legs are being moved. A tripod stance is a behaviour in which quadruped animals rear up on their hind legs and use their tail to support this position. Several animals use this behaviour to improve observation or surveillance, and during feeding, grooming, thermoregulation ...
Their limbs are adapted for hanging and grasping, not for supporting their weight. Muscle mass makes up only 25 to 30 percent of their total body weight. Most other mammals have a muscle mass that makes up 40 to 45 percent of their total body weight. [ 31 ]
The animal will typically regain consciousness after a period of a few minutes to four hours, a process that begins with a slight twitching of the ears. [42] Some species of opossums have prehensile tails, although dangling by the tail is more common among juveniles. An opossum may also use its tail as a brace and a fifth limb when climbing.
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The sugar glider has a squirrel-like body with a long, partially (weakly) [22] prehensile tail. The length from the nose to the tip of the tail is about 24–30 cm (9–12 in), and males and females weigh 140 and 115 grams (5 and 4 oz) respectively. [23]
The tail is the elongated section at the rear end of a bilaterian animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage extending backwards from the midline of the torso. In vertebrate animals that evolved to lose their tails (e.g. frogs and hominid primates ), the coccyx is the homologous vestigial of the tail.