In others, for example snakes, the
flexion begins in the joints of the body.
In winged creatures the tail serves, like a ship's rudder, to keep
the flying thing in its course. The tail then must like other limbs be
able to bend at the point of attachment. And so flying insects, and
birds (Schizoptera) whose tails are ill-adapted for the use in
question, for example peacocks, and domestic cocks, and generally
birds that hardly fly, cannot steer a straight course. Flying
insects have absolutely no tail, and so drift along like a
rudderless vessel, and beat against anything they happen upon; and
this applies equally to sharded insects, like the scarab-beetle and
the chafer, and to unsharded, like bees and wasps. Further, birds that
are not made for flight have a tail that is of no use; for instance
the purple coot and the heron and all water-fowl. These fly stretching
out their feet as a substitute for a tail, and use their legs
instead of a tail to direct their flight. The flight of insects is
slow and frail because the character of their feathery wings is not
proportionate to the bulk of their body; this is heavy, their wings
small and frail, and so the flight they use is like a cargo boat
attempting to make its voyage with oars; now the frailty both of the
actual wings and of the outgrowths upon them contributes in a
measure to the flight described. Among birds, the peacock's tail is at
one time useless because of its size, at another because it is shed.
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