A genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails

A genetic parasite may have robbed humans and other apes of their tails.

Around 25 million years ago, this parasite, a small stretch of repetitive DNA called an Alu element, ended up in a gene important for tail development, researchers report in the Feb. 29 Nature. The single insertion altered the gene Tbxt in a way that seems to have sparked one of the defining differences between monkeys and apes: Monkeys have tails, apes don’t.

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