Why do animals like lizards need tails if their center of gravity is so close to the ground? Is it purely for mobility at that point? I don’t fully understand it
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Lizards don’t need tails.
Evolution doesn’t care if you need something or not, though, so unless a random mutation that gets rid of the tail not only provides an advantage to tailless individuals but *something* also happens to wipe out tailed individuals (for example being out-competed by their tailless cousins or climate change causing a period of extreme resource scarcity) your tail won’t just fall off just because you don’t need it.
Well, unless you’re a species of lizard that does have its tail fall off because you don’t need it. Then I guess it will, but that’s again just a random mutation which might be beneficial to the individuals that have it but won’t necessarily harm the ones that don’t.
Oh and to be clear, some lizards *do* need tails. They use them to help climb trees or whip at predators such as cats.
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