Aliens In Anderson And Niven
Faces
We discussed alien bodily forms in the above articles but may not have mentioned tails:
Merseians
Shalmuans
Wodenites
Cynthians
Susaians
Gargantuans
kzinti -
- and no doubt many other intelligent species are tailed so why aren't Terrans? A tail can be used as an extra limb. Karl the Gargantuan points with his. Merseians sit on theirs and touch them for greeting. Susaians cling with their tails in free fall:
"'...tell them to link hands or tails or whatever...'" (FLAG, p. 153)
In Kilgore Trout/Philip Jose Farmer's Venus On The Half-Shell, when a man visits a planet of tailed humanoids, they assume that he will want one surgically implanted. So why did Terrestrial human beings evolutionarily lose their tails?
