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A lion's tail

The tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds. While tails are primarily a feature of vertebrates, some invertebrates including scorpions and springtails, as well as snails and slugs, have tail-like appendages that are sometimes referred to as tails. Tailed objects are sometimes referred to as "caudate" and the part of the body associated with or proximal to the tail are given the adjective "caudal".

Function[link]

Alopex lagopus (arctic fox) sleeping with its tail wrapped as a blanket.

Animal tails are used in a variety of ways. They provide a source of locomotion for fish and some other forms of marine life. Many land animals use their tails to brush away flies and other biting insects. Some species, including cats and kangaroos, use their tails for balance; and some, such as New World monkeys and opossums, have what are known as prehensile tails, which are adapted to allow them to grasp tree branches.

Tails are also used for social signaling. Some deer species flash the white underside of their tails to warn other nearby deer of possible danger, and canids (including domestic dogs) indicate emotions through the positioning and movement of their tails. Some species' tails are armored, and some, such as the those of scorpions, contain venom.

Some species of lizard can detach ("cast") their tails from their bodies. This can help them to escape from predators, which are either distracted by the wriggling detached tail, or left with only the tail while the rest of the lizard flees. Tails cast in this manner generally grow back over time, though the replacement is typically darker in colour than the original.

The tails of most birds end in long feathers called rectrices. These feathers are used as a rudder, helping the bird to steer and maneuver in flight; they also help the bird to balance while it is perched. In some species—such as birds of paradise, lyrebirds, and most notably peafowl—modified tail feathers play an important role in courtship displays. The extra-stiff tail feathers of other species, including woodpeckers and woodcreepers, allow them to brace themselves firmly against tree trunks.

The tails of grazing animals, such as horses, are used both to sweep away insects, and positioned or moved in ways that indicate the animal's physical or emotional state.

Types[link]

• A scut is a short, erect tail. Hares, rabbits, and deer have scuts.
• A prehensile tail is a tail that can grasp or hold objects. Examples are monkeys, rats and snakes (prehensile body).

Human tails[link]

Human embryos have a tail that measures about one-sixth of the size of the embryo itself.^[1] As the embryo develops into a fetus, the tail is absorbed by the growing body. The developmental tail is thus a human vestigial structure.^[2][3] Infrequently,^{[clarification needed]} a child is born with a "soft tail", which contains no vertebrae, but only blood vessels, muscles and nerves, although there have been several documented cases of tails containing cartilage or up to five vertebrae.^[4] Some of these tails may in fact be sacrococcygeal teratomas. A man named Chandre Oram, who lives in West Bengal, a state in India, is famous because of his 33-centimetre (13 in) tail. It is not believed to be a true tail, however, but rather a case of spina bifida.

Humans have a "tail bone" (the coccyx) attached to the pelvis, in the same place which other mammals have tails. The tail bone is formed of fused vertebrae, usually four, at the bottom of the vertebral column. It does not protrude externally, but retains an anatomical purpose: providing an attachment for muscles like the gluteus maximus.^{[citation needed]}

Folklore about tails[link]

• The Japanese have a tradition that some animals can become Yokai by acquiring extra tails and thus gain supernatural powers.
• Some parts of the world the tail of an ox is used by a shamaness as an implement in their blessing rituals.
• A superstition shown in older cartoons says that pouring salt on a bird's tail feathers will keep it from flying.^{[clarification needed]}
• In the Dutch language, the at sign (@) is called Apenstaartje, literally translated as (little) monkey-tail.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Scorpion

• 

  Pig (Sus domestica)

• 

  Glyptodon (Glyptodon asper)

• 

  Longhorn cowfish (Lactoria cornuta)

• 

  Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi)

• 

  Polo pony (Equus ferus caballus)

• 

  American alligator (Alligator mississipiensis)

• 

  Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius)

See also[link]

• Rump (animal)
• Empennage, the tail of an aircraft

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tails

1. ^ "Human fetuses have tails, proving that evolution is true". The Free Lance-Star. July 5, 2005. http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/072005/07052005/109580. Retrieved 2009-04-28. 
2. ^ "Human tail–caudal appendage: tethered cord". Nature. February 1, 2008. http://www.nature.com/jp/journal/v28/n7/full/jp200839a.html. Retrieved 2009-04-28. 
3. ^ "The 'human tail' causing tethered cervical cord". Nature (journal). November 14, 2006. http://www.nature.com/sc/journal/v45/n8/full/3101988a.html. Retrieved 2009-04-28. 
4. ^ Mouied Alashari, Joy Torakawa: True Tail in a Newborn, Pediatric Dermatology 12(3), pp 263–266, 2008

Spotted Tail
Chief Spotted Tail
Tribe	Brulé Lakota
Born	1823
Died	August 5, 1881
Native name	Siŋté Glešká (birth name Jumping Buffalo)
Known for	Statesman and warrior, with interests in peace and education
Resting place	Rosebud, South Dakota
Education	Sinte Gleska University named for him, 1971
Children	Ah-ho-appa (Fallen Leaf)
Parents	Father, Cunka or Tangle Hair; mother, Walks-with-the-Pipe
Relatives	Sisters, Iron Between Horns and Kills Enemy

Siŋté Glešká (pronounced gleh-shka, Spotted Tail) (1823^[1] - 1881) was a Brulé Lakota tribal chief. Although a great warrior in his youth, and having taken part in the Grattan massacre, he declined to participate in Red Cloud's War.^[2] He had become convinced of the futility of opposing the white incursions into his homeland; he became a statesman, speaking for peace and defending the rights of his tribe.

He made several trips to Washington, D.C in the 1870s to represent his people, and was noted for his interest in bringing education to the Sioux.^[3]

Biography[link]

Spotted Tail was born about 1823 in the White River country west of the Missouri River in present-day South Dakota. During the previous 40 years, the Lakota or Teton Sioux had moved from present-day Minnesota and eastern South Dakota to areas west of the Missouri. They had differentiated into several sub-tribes or bands, including the Saône, Brulé and Oglala. During this time the people adopted the use of horses and expanded their range in hunting the buffalo across their wide grazing patterns. Spotted Tail's father, Cunka or Tangle Hair, was from the Saône band, and his mother, Walks-with-the-Pipe, was a Brulé. He was given the birth name of Jumping Buffalo.^[4]

The young man took his warrior name, Spotted Tail, after receiving a gift of a raccoon tail from a white trapper; he sometimes wore a raccoon tail in his war headdress (sometimes called war bonnet). He was said to be a great warrior. He took part in the Grattan Massacre.

Two of his sisters, Iron Between Horns and Kills Enemy, were married to the elder Crazy Horse, in what was traditional Sioux practice for elite men. Spotted Tail may have been the maternal uncle of the famous warrior Crazy Horse, which meant he was a relative of the notable Touch the Clouds as well.^[5]

Marriage and family[link]

Wife of Spotted Tail

Spotted Tail married and had children.

Eugene Ware, a Fort Laramie army officer, wrote that Spotted Tail’s daughter, Ah-ho-appa (Fallen Leaf), “... was one of those individuals found in all lands, at all places, and among all people; she was misplaced.”^{[citation needed]} He suggested that she adopted some European-American practices, and that she was thought to be secretly in love with one of the officers at the fort.

When she was dying in 1866, Fallen Leaf made her father promise that she would be buried on a hillside overlooking Fort Laramie. The entire garrison at the post helped Spotted Tail to honor her request by arranging for a ceremonial funeral, including a Christian service and Sioux ceremony. Many years later, Spotted Tail had her remains transported to the Rosebud Indian Agency in South Dakota and re-interred in a traditional Sioux way. He put up a monument to her.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie[link]

Spotted Tail agreed to the treaty, which in 1868 established the Great Sioux Reservation in West River, west of the Missouri River. In 1871, the senior Spotted Tail visited Washington, D.C., to meet the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker and President Ulysses S. Grant. While there, he met with Red Cloud, a chief of the Oglala Lakota, and they agreed to work together on preserving Sioux rights and land.

In 1881, following the Black Hills War, Spotted Tail was killed by Crow Dog for reasons which have been disputed. According to the historian Dee Brown:

"White officials... dismissed the killing as the culmination of a quarrel over a woman, but Spotted Tail's friends said that it was the result of a plot to break the power of the chiefs...."^[2]

According to Luther Standing Bear in his memoir My People the Sioux, Spotted Tail was killed by Crow Dog after taking the wife of a crippled man. Perhaps more significantly, he was said to have sold land not belonging to him. Although this angered many of the Sioux leaders, Chief Standing Bear cautioned the others against hasty action. Spotted Tail's flaunting of his presumed power was brought to a head when he stole the wife of a crippled man. When told by a council of chiefs to give the man his wife back, Spotted Tail refused. He said the US Government was behind him. At this point, several men decided that Spotted Tail should be killed but, before they could act, Crow Dog assassinated him on August 5, 1881.

He is buried in Rosebud, South Dakota.^[6]

A tribal university (Sinte Gleska University) on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota was named for him in 1971. ^[7]

Prelude to the Great Sioux War of 1876-77[link]

Spotted Tail's delegation to Washington

In 1874, George Armstrong Custer led a reconnaissance mission into Sioux territory that reported gold in the Black Hills, an area held sacred by the local Indians. Formerly, the Army tried to keep miners out but did not succeed; the threat of violence grew. In May 1875, delegations headed by Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, and Lone Horn traveled to Washington, D.C. in a last-ditch attempt to persuade President Grant to honor existing treaties and stem the flow of miners into their territories. The Indians met with Grant, Secretary of the Interior Delano, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith, who informed them that Congress wanted to resolve the matter by giving the tribes $25,000 for their land and resettling them into Indian Territory. The Indians rejected such a treaty, with Spotted Tail’s reply to the proposition being as follows:

“My father, I have considered all the Great Father told me, and have come here to give you an answer.... When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay.... I respect the Treaty (doubtless referring to the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie) but the white men who come in our country do not. You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it. I was not born there.... If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone....”

Although the chieftains did not achieve their goal of gaining exclusion of miners, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud did not take part in or support the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

Spotted Tail, by Henry Farny

See also[link]

• Paha Sapa (The Black Hills)
• Crazy Horse

Notes[link]

1. ^ Hyde 2006, p. 3
2. ^ ^{a b} *Brown, Dee (1970), Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-11979-6 
3. ^ St. Francis Indian School, School History, http://www.sfisk12.org/index.php?pageid=history, retrieved November 21, 2008 
4. ^ Hyde 2006, pp. 3–22
5. ^ Hyde 2006, pp. 14–15
6. ^ Find A Grave: Spotted Tail, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7878706, retrieved December 8, 2006 
7. ^ History of Sinte Gleska Sinte Gleska University

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Spotted Tail

References[link]

• Hyde, George E. (1974), Spotted Tail's Folk: A History of the Brulé Sioux, University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 361, ISBN 978-0-8061-1380-7, http://books.google.com/?id=ZbkNJpW-BAwC 

• Griske, Michael (2005), The Diaries of John Hunton, Heritage Books, pp. 66–69, 91–96, ISBN 0-7884-3804-2 

External links[link]

• Spotted Tail at Find a Grave