From a bunny’s seemingly-useless fluffy li’l puffball to a scorpion’s practical and deadly venom-filled stinger, the world is filled with all sorts of wonderful tails! And heck, some of them aren’t even tails at all, but that’s ok!

SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! 

Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!

And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!

A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Tom Mosner for helping to make the show possible!

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! 

While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

[Trivia Question]

Seahorse square tail segments 

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/why_the_seahorses_tail_is_square_and_how_it_could_be_an_inspiration

[Fact Off]

Swallowtail butterfly tails protect from attacking damage

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/butterfly-wing-tail-loss-break-birds-escape

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-evidence-butterflies-tails-distract-predators.html

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.0562

Bird-of-paradise light-absorbing tail feathers

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02088-w

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/new-vogelkop-superb-bird-of-paradise-changes-up-the-old-song-and-dance/

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/20/20813054/vantablack-ultrablack-black-material-surrey-nanosystems-carbon-nanotubes-science-materials

[Ask the Science Couch]

Evolutionary tail loss in some primates (apes)

https://www.science.org/content/article/jumping-gene-may-have-erased-tails-humans-and-other-apes-and-boosted-our-risk-birth-defects

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.14.460388v1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263034/

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-don-t-humans-have-tails

[Butt One More Thing]

Ant head mimicry on wasp tail/metasoma

Image: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Posterior-metasomal-tergites-and-ovipositor-of-Clistopyga-caramba-sp-nov-holotype_fig2_281632324

https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4013.2.9

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-segments-scorpion-metasoma.html

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.