Recipe for Sleeplessness - Opposable Thumbs vs. Prehensile Tails

So I finally decided to read 'A Walk in the Woods' by Bill Bryson - it had been by my bedside for a few days and somehow the picture of that bear on the cover was more inviting than usual. Moreover, I was hoping to fall asleep soon enough. Afterall Dallas Mavericks had just beaten Miami Heat in the second game of the NBA Finals and I was happy.

I was lying on my bed with my left arm under my neck to prop my head up a little bit, and with my right hand I was holding the book - the little finger and the thumb of my right hand were helping me keep the book open to where I was. I must have been a couple of more pages, and just a few more blinks away from falling asleep when this strange thought occurred to me - how would I have been able to read this book if I had no opposable thumb? The very next thought was - what are the other things that I wouldn't have been able to do without opposable thumbs?

Right then I knew that this is going to be a long night. I tried so hard to get rid of that thought and focus on the book again. But there was no going back to it now. I was way too occupied thinking about things that one wouldn't be able to do without thumbs - everything from not being able to hit the spacebar on the keyboard to not being able to shoot basketball to tie shoelaces occurred to me. Some of the things that occurred to me were kinda obvious, some not so much. But some others were downright 'R' rated, and can't mention any of those here.

Many of the problems that we would have faced without opposable thumbs we would been able to tackle with some ingenuity. Maybe we would have developed some other feature in our body! How about a prehensile tail? Voila. A prehensile tail would be a good substitute. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that a prehensile tail would be way better than opposable thumbs. If somehow I had a choice between opposable thumbs and prehensile tail, I would certainly go for the latter. How about you?



Go Mavs. And do not ever think about what you would do if you never had your thumbs, or you won't be able to sleep at night.