Prehensility  

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Prehensility is the quality of an appendage or organ that has adapted for grasping or holding. The word is derived from the Latin term prehendere, meaning "to grasp".

Etymology

From prae- (“before”) +‎ *hendō (“I take, seize”) (not attested without prefix), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰed-; akin to Ancient Greek χανδάνω (khandánō, “hold, contain”), and English get. Compare praeda (“prey”) (earlier praeheda) and hedera (“ivy”).

Examples

Appendages that can become prehensile include:

Uses

Prehensility affords animals a great natural advantage in manipulating their environment for feeding, digging and defense. It enables many animals, such as primates, to use tools to complete tasks that would otherwise be impossible without highly specialized anatomy. For example, chimpanzees have the ability to use sticks to obtain termites and grubs in a manner similar to human fishing. However, not all prehensile organs are applied to tool use; the giraffe tongue, for instance, is instead used in feeding and self-cleaning.





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Prehensility" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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