A baby girl was born with a tail covered in skin and hair that was 5.7 centimeters long. Her birth stunned doctors at the rural Mexican hospital who delivered her via C-section with no discernable health problems or abnormalities – apart from a tail containing muscles and nerves.
The baby had seemingly no history of exposure to any infections or radiation and both its parents were healthy, as noted in the case details published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.
The baby's tail measured 5.7 centimeters in length and was 3-5 millimeters in diameter. The hair and skin-covered tail contained nerves and the baby would cry when it was pierced with a needle.
After an X-ray of her lower back, it was found that there weren't any bones or other abnormalities in the tail. This means that the tail isn't vestigial, a useless organ like an appendix. Rather, this was a "true tail."
The doctors checked for several possible medical issues, including in the brain and spine. Then, two months later, they came back again and re-examined the baby and her tail, where they determined it had grown in proportion to her own growth.
With that in mind, the doctors decided to remove the tail and reconstruct the area with plastic surgery.
In the end, the baby was allowed to go back home and she has been free of any issues and complications since.
Babies born with tails
This isn't the first time people have been born with a tail.
As noted in the journal, the presence of true tails in humans is extremely rare, with the latest review published in 2020 noting that there had been only 195 cases up until 2017 in French, Italian, English, German and Japanese case reports.