Of Apes and Men: Are You Pulling My Tail?

While checking the forecast on accuweather.com, I was surprised to find, on a weather site no less, an article entitled, “Why don’t humans have tails? Scientists find answers in an unlikely place.” (The article, posted 3/25/2024, was written by Mindy Weisberger of CNN. I have posted the link below.)

Frankly, I had never asked this question! I thought I knew the answer! Was I missing something? Maybe a tail? I was curious.

One’s verdict regarding the Genesis account brings inevitable consequences. Other questions and answers inevitably follow. Based on the Genesis record, which I (and many scientists) hold to be true, it’s super easy to explain and understand why human beings do not have tails.

We never had tails! God made man as a separate creation, from the dust of the earth. Man is not a glorified, improved, evolved ape. Period.

However, those who deny the Genesis account desperately seek to find another mechanism by which life as we know it came to be. As a result, there are countless unanswerable questions which emerge.

Where are our tails, friends?

Great apes have tails. Human beings do not. This is a problem for the evolutionist, who had presupposed that apes’ tails evolved because tails were beneficial mutations. (The article cited below will acknowledge this.) Therefore, apes with tails would have survived due to this added resource, while those that did not would have perished. Survival of the fittest, you know.

So how did evolution become de-evolution? Why don’t human beings have tails?

This is a huge challenge. Unbelieving scientists have spent countless hours, time, and money to discover the answers to this crisis. According to the article’s title, they found “answers” – real answers, not ideas, theories, or possibilities. How? By going to “an unlikely place.” Hmmm … That has you wondering where they went, how they got there, and how they could be sure that these were the actual answers.

At the top of the web page there is a photo of monkeys. The caption reads, “Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans’ closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago.” There is no footnote or source cited to prove this statement.

The reason for the loss of our tails is said to be a case of “gene jumping.” “Jumping genes” are genetic sequences capable of switching their location in the genome and triggering or undoing mutations.

The article states in part:

Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. 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 (Again, no evidence of this claim is provided. It’s a “given” to the writer of this CNN article.). The loss has long been associated with our transition to bipedalism, but little was known about the genetic factors that triggered primate taillessness.

Now, scientists have traced our tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code that is abundant in our genome but had been dismissed for decades as junk DNA, a sequence that seemingly serves no biological purpose. They identified the snippet, known as an Alu element, in the regulatory code of a gene associated with tail length called TBXT. Alu is also part of a class known as jumping genes, which are genetic sequences capable of switching their location in the genome and triggering or undoing mutations.

Study coauthor Itai Yanai is a professor with the Institute for Systems Genetics and Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. This “expert” admitted that this “jumping-gene answer” was “astounding.” He said, “I think it’s astounding that one Alu element — one small, little thing — can lead to the loss of a whole appendage like the tail.”

Astounding indeed! And how did a “jumping gene” – just one – in one of our “primate ancestors” – just one – lead to the loss of tails in all – yes, all – great apes and human beings from that point forward?

Another admission – a very honest one – came from the lead study author Bo Xia, a research fellow in the Gene Regulation Observatory and principal investigator at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Xia said, “The more I study the genome, the more I realize how little we know about it,” Xia said.

In our current social and cultural climate, unproved humanistic assumptions about origins are stated and affirmed in biology, chemistry, genetics, paleontology, and a host of other sciences. We who believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, authoritative Word of God must continue to ask …

“Are you pulling my tail?”

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-dont-humans-have-tails-scientists-find-answers-in-an-unlikely-place/1634668