Have you ever wondered at the marvel of the greyhound tail. What is its purpose other than placing large dents in drywall (as my buddy Warior's parents can attest to). Now I am sure that I could google it up and discover the scientic theories behind it however for my purposes I find it much more enjoyable to speculate. Cows have tails seemingly for swatting flies. If that is the reason for the greyhound tail I have to wonder what kind of gynormous insects they were battling. Also greyhounds seem to be pretty good at contorting themselves so that they can access all corners of their beings and so I have to wonder if the tail has some other purpose.
Since I started taking Kassa to the location we will name as "the public fenced area where no other dogs are playing, but it is legal for dogs to play". I noticed that when he is in need of a quick decelleration he circles his tail furiously like a hellicpoter blade. I tried to video the phenominon this morning but of course non of the video depicted it well. This could be also because I try not to put him in situations where he has no out, making it extra hard to film. Kassa can swing his rear appendage so quickly that I think he may achieve liftoff. Has anyone else noticed this in their hounds?
Kassa jumping for the ball
Kassa running and decelerating from a distance
Zoomed in but still doesn't my helicopter boy in his glory
7 comments:
Interesting. I wonder if it actually helps slow them down.
I really can't see how it could as a fan or anything.. but I wounder if it helps shift their weight to the back legs so the are falling backward rather than forwards. Its like anti-lock breaking..
I have been told that they use it like a rudder to help them run when they race. It helps them to balance in a way. We had a foster who came to us with half a tail, and he'd been an amazing racer, but without his tail, they retired him right away. I'm not sure if it was just him or not, but he had the hardest time learning to walk across our linoleum floor.
But, yes, in answer to one of your questions, I have definitely seen the phenomenon!
I've got plenty of videos of the greyhounds running and I must slow it down and see if I can get some good 'helicopter tail' movements and see if they do use it like a rudder. I'm pretty sure Beryl does but Lucy, who has a very thin tail shaped like a question mark (!) might be a different story. I think if she used her tail as a rudder she'd be running around in all directions, lol!
I think the motion is extra visible when watching Kassa because he has a white tipped tail. Man alive, I just read through my post and I really have to remember to use chrome to enter in content because it has an as you type spell checker. I probably shouldn't try to write these blog entries in the few minutes before work starts. Oh darn .. I'm doing it again.
Hmm, I'm going o have to watch mine for this. I think I've seen it, but now I'm really interested.
Ours does the helicopter tail when he's excited... when one of us comes home from being out and about, it looks like he's going to levitate off of the floor! I haven't noticed him propellering that much when he runs, though.
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