Teenager has nine-inch tail removed

“It became a problem when the tail grew outside the body,” said the 14-year-old boy’s mother, who doesn’t want to be named.

“He would just lift the [8-inch] tail every time he needed to change his clothes. I could see that it was very annoying and painful for him, so I took him to a hospital.” Doctors say the teenager might have developed the tail in the womb as a result of a spinal deformity, but that it appeared outside only after he grew up.

“When the size of the tail grew… [it] began to press on the boy’s back,” says surgeon, Dr Pramod Giri. “It was cosmetically and psychologically disturbing for him.”