Prehensility is the quality of an appendage

Appendage

In invertebrate biology, an appendage is an external body part, or natural prolongation, that protrudes from an organism's body . It is a general term that covers any of the homologous body parts that may extend from a body segment...

 or organ

Organ (anatomy)

In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues . The main tissue is the one that is unique for the specific organ. For example, main tissue in the heart is the myocardium, while sporadic are...

 that has adapted for grasping or holding. The word is derived from the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 term prehendere, meaning "to grasp."

Examples

Appendages that can become prehensile include:

• Prehensile feet
  Prehensile feet
  Prehensile feet are lower limbs that possess prehensility, the ability to grasp like a hand. They are most commonly observed in monkeys, who similarly possess prehensile tails, and apes....
  
   have evolved many times across many different species
  • The hands of primates are all prehensile to varying degrees
  • The claw
    Claw
    A claw is a curved, pointed appendage, found at the end of a toe or finger in most mammals, birds, and some reptiles. However, the word "claw" is also often used in reference to an invertebrate. Somewhat similar fine hooked structures are found in arthropods such as beetles and spiders, at the end...
    
    s of cat
    Cat
    The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
    
    s are also prehensile
• Prehensile tail
  Prehensile tail
  A prehensile tail is the tail of an animal that has adapted to be able to grasp and/or hold objects. Fully prehensile tails can be used to hold and manipulate objects, and in particular to aid arboreal creatures in finding and eating food in the trees...
  
  s – Many extant lizard
  Lizard
  Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...
  
  s have prehensile tails (gecko
  Gecko
  Geckos are lizards belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from 1.6 cm to 60 cm....
  
  s, chameleon
  Chameleon
  Chameleons are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, the possession by many of a...
  
  s, and a species of skink
  Skink
  Skinks are lizards belonging to the family Scincidae. Together with several other lizard families, including Lacertidae , they comprise the superfamily or infraorder Scincomorpha...
  
  ). Several fossil
  Fossil
  Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
  
   animals have been interpreted as having prehensile tails, including several Late Triassic
  Triassic
  The Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 250 to 200 Mya . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...
  
   drepanosaurs, and possibly the Late Permian
  Permian
  The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...
  
   synapsid
  Synapsid
  Synapsids are a group of animals that includes mammals and everything more closely related to mammals than to other living amniotes. They are easily separated from other amniotes by having an opening low in the skull roof behind each eye, leaving a bony arch beneath each, accounting for their name...
  
   Suminia.
• Tongue – of giraffe
  Giraffe
  The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...
  
  s in particular
• Nose – elephant
  Elephant
  Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
  
  s and tapir
  Tapir
  A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...
  
  s
• Lips – Lake Sturgeon
  Lake sturgeon
  The lake sturgeon is a North American temperate freshwater fish, one of about 20 species of sturgeon. Like other sturgeons, this species is an evolutionarily ancient bottomfeeder with a partly cartilaginous skeleton and skin bearing rows of bony plates...
  
  , orangutan
  Orangutan
  Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
  
  s, horse
  Horse
  The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
  
  s and rhinos
  Rhinoceros
  Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
  
  
• Cephalopod arm
  Cephalopod arm
  A cephalopod arm is distinct from a tentacle, though the terms are often used interchangeably.Generally, cephalopod arms have suckers along most of their length, as opposed to tentacles, which have suckers only near their ends. Octopuses have eight arms and no tentacles, while squid and cuttlefish...
  
   – arms such as those of octopuses

Prehensility is an adaptation that has afforded species a great natural advantage in manipulating their environment for feeding, digging

Digging

Digging may refer to:* A form of excavation* Cave digging* Clam digging* Double digging, gardening technique* Dump digging* Gold digging** Gold-digging* Gum digging* Historical digging* Privy digging* Well digging...

, and defense. It enables many animals, such as primates, to use tools in order to complete tasks that would otherwise be impossible without highly specialized anatomy. For example, chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

s have the ability to use sticks to obtain termite

Termite

Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...

s and grubs

Larva

A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...

 in a manner similar to human fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

. However, not all prehensile organs are applied to tool use—the giraffe tongue, for instance, is instead used in feeding

Feeding

Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffix -vore from Latin vorare, meaning 'to devour', or phagy, from Greek φαγειν, meaning 'to eat'.-Evolutionary history:...

 and self-cleaning

Personal grooming

Personal grooming is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. It is a species-typical behavior that is controlled by neural circuits in the brain.- In humans :...

behaviors.