A Brazilian infant had doctors scratching their heads not so much by the fact that he was born with a real human tail but on account of the 1.5-inch-wide ball at the end of it that resembled a meaty medieval club.
Per reports, the appendage started growing when the child was still in the mother's womb and was 6 inches long at the time of birth: "The unnamed infant’s “epic tail” began sprouting in the womb where, like all babies, he developed an embryonic appendage around four to eight weeks after gestation. However, while the fifth limb is normally reabsorbed to form the tailbone, this tyke’s butt tassel continued to grow."
What makes this case special is it is extremely rare to find an infant born with a true human tail that is not just a protrusion jutting out of the spine. The tail and ball were removed via surgery at Albert Sabin Children's Hospital in Fortaleza without any complications.
While most pseudo tails are made up of bone and cartilage, this case was different as the protuberance was comprised of tissue and fat as this excerpt explains: "The newborn’s appendage was comprised of only tissue and fat, making him one of less than 40 documented children in history to be born with a true tail, according to BMJ case reports."
In a similar case, a baby girl born in a rural town in Mexico was also found to have a true tail, and according to reports, cried when the doctors pierced it with a needle: "A subsequent X-ray revealed no evidence of anomalies or bone structures inside the tail, suggesting that the posterior protrusion was not a vestigial tail — an evolutionary remnant — like in most of the 195 rare cases documented in case studies from the US, England, France, Japan, Italy, and Germany, according to the journal report."
Some cultures, like India, are known to worship human tails.
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