Why do most marine mammals have horizontal tails, while other marine life tend to have vertical tails?
In: 75
I don’t actually know but if I had to guess it is because marine mammals were not always marine mammals. They were land mammals originally. If you think about swimming with a pair of legs an up and down motion is significantly easier to do than side to side. Over the course of evolution with small incremental changes, it is fewer changes with more immediate results for the legs and feet to fuse while maintaining the same spine and hip structure that makes up and down motion easier than side to side.
So basically the up and down motion is because marine mammals effectively have legs and feet structure inside their tails where as fish do not.
Compare this to the evolution of fish, their side to side motion fins are flattened out tails instead of fused legs and feet. If you look at many fish they have small guiding fins where there would have been legs. Tail motion works better side to side (watch how an alligator or snake swims) so evolution’s small incremental changes would have favored side to side purely because fish evolved swimming using a tail while mammals evolved swimming using legs.
Latest Answers