This forum has been getting a tad slow lately so I thought I might post something that I find interesting and somewhat entertaining.
This is a picture of a baby alligator born without a tail, next to a normal litter mate. This baby has it's entire tail, but it is "consolidated" into a single butt-like mass. One would have to see a close-up of the mass to understand what I am talking about, but try to imagine that it is all there, just connected into one short bulge. This picture was taken some years ago when he was but a week old. (His name is "Stubby", by the way). But as he has aged and grown, the mass has increased in weight and he has the same balance on land and in the water that he would have if his tail were long. Shortly after he was hatched I fashioned a prosthetic tail for him. This was whittled out of a black rubber bungee cord and was life-like in every way possible. I made sure to carve the exact shape and physical characteristics of a natural tail so as to mirror the dynamics of a natural tails' function when moving through water. Aside from the weight of the rubber, this worked very well until he outgrew it in a few months. As he grew I tried to keep reproducing a nice, functional tail for him so he could occasionally swim, but after a certain size I was hard put to find adequate materials with which to work. And so he lives now without the benefits of a tail. He gets by just fine in deep or shallow water. He has adapted to swimming with using only his four feet as rudders and flippers. Needless to say he can't achieve much speed, but he can navigate surprisingly well at a moderate speed.
If anyone is interested in seeing pictures of his original "baby tail" I still have it and would be happy to snap a few pictures of it and post them. If you want to see any current pictures of Stubby you will have to wait until I can either get over there (Louisianna) or get someone to take some pictures of him for me.
I hope you have found this somewhat entertaining.
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Human "progress" equates to nature's demise.
