>>14295464>It cares nothing if something is useful or not; all it cares about is "do inviduals who possess it tend to reproduce?"Okay but in big population numbers over multiple generations there's a strong correlation between usefulness and ability to reproduce
If in a generation of 10,000 cavemen the tail / no-tail is split evenly, but of those 10,000 5,000 of the non-taield ones survive to reproduce against 4,999 of the non-taield ones, and this repeats over every generation, you'll soon have non-taield ones be dominant (numbers are all fucked up of course but you get the idea)
Fingernails are probably even less tied to usefulness, though the fact we didn't lose them completely makes me think that "claws" are still useful to us in some form, even just as a thin protection for our tips (also think of how many times a day you sue your fingernails for random shit, even just scratching away some grime from your skin); and the appendix is theorized to have an useful function as an environment for the replenishment of gut flora, even if it might end up killing you
>>14295247I guess when we started to evolve a good enough sense of balance and biomechanics to stand and run efficiently as we do, a tail would jsut be dead weight and something sticking out that coudl be ripped off in a fight and leave you to die of septic shock; a longer one would probasbly even get in the way of our locomotion
