Talk:Prehensile tail

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Primates Mid‑importance Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. human anatomy. To participate, you can edit the attached article, or contribute further at WikiProject Animal anatomy. This project is an offshoot of WikiProject AnimalsAnimal anatomyWikipedia:WikiProject Animal anatomyTemplate:WikiProject Animal anatomyAnimal anatomy articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

In the section titled "Ecology of the prehensile tail", I deleted the following sentence.

In contrast, in less dense forest such as in Southeast Asia it is observed that gliding animals tend to be more common instead, whereas there are few gliding vertebrates in South America.

Afaik birds which glide plenty and are quite plentifull in South America, are vertebrates, making this statement completely wrong. I suspect the statement should say 'mammals' instead of both 'animals' as well as 'vertebrates'. Anyway, I am deleting this sentence for the present. Anyone who knows better is welcome to correct and replace it. --Stagyar 06:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Birds are flying animals which can glide, but not gliding animals i.e animals that are notable for being able to glide but not fly. I have added examples to clarify. Thanks for pointing out that this might not be clear. Nicolharper 13:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What anatomic features (muscle, bone, etc.) are inside of a tail? How is it attached? Can it be regrown in most species? -- Beland (talk) 07:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My house cat once was in my arms on her back. While there, she wrapped her tail around my arm. I doubt she had any strength in her tail. So she wouldn't have been able to truly grip my arm. But I think, for her, it helped remind her I was still there. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Truthfully put, tail prehensility is more of a continuum than discrete categorical measure. Most animals with substantial muscular tails will use them for balance or wrap them around objects for stability, so to avoid making the category so broad as to be meaningless, we typically restrict it to species who can generate substantial gripping force with their tails, such as spider monkeys and chameleons. HCA (talk) 13:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's a continuum and the division made in the article, animals with "fully" or "partially" prehensile tails is not helpful. Note that some animals appear in both categories. 173.174.85.204 (talk) 14:41, 5 July 2016 (UTC)Eric[reply]

Why are porcupines from genus Coendou listed under both prehensile and partially prehensile? Katytanis (talk) 20:55, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seahorses are listed as having both fully and partially prehensile tails. In truth the distinction is not made clear in the article. Maybe just combine the two sections? IAmNitpicking (talk) 21:25, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]