For an 18-year-old teenager from India, doctors still removed a tail almost 15 centimeters long. For a long time, the young man ignored this atavism until it hurt him to sit and even sleep.
A resident of the Indian city of Nagpur turned to a local surgeon with complaints about the tail. Doctors explained that this birth defect formed when the boy was still in the womb. However, he had to disappear over time, which did not happen. The developmental anomaly persisted, and the tail continued to grow after the formation of the spine, although usually the body of the embryo absorbs it from the back.
The boy's family and the teenager himself ignored this defect for a long time, so as not to attract increased attention. Otherwise, the teenager could become the object of ridicule in the village. However, over time, the long tail began to negatively affect the boy's daily life, and he turned to doctors for help.
A team of six surgeons successfully removed the abnormal growth in an operation that lasted for an hour. The doctors themselves explained that they were faced with an extremely rare case, the likes of which they had not seen for a very long time. They were surprised that the teenager sought help only after the onset of extreme pain in the lower back, which occurred during sleep and when trying to sit down.
At the same time, psychologically, the boy even resigned himself to the appearance of this tail. It is possible that in the local culture, the tail is considered a sign of belonging to some higher creature, since many Indians with similar birth defects prefer not to remove them.