Maybe there isn’t any advantage to a lack of tail. If the mutation occurred in a common ancestor of all apes, and didn’t convey a significant disadvantage, then all apes would be tailless. Just because a new phenotype becomes prevalent, doesn’t necessarily mean it provides an evolutionary advantage
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They tell us that we lost out tails evolving up from little snails. I say it’s all just wind in sails.
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I’m no evolutionary biologist but I didn’t think mutations had to offer an advantage to be preserved: they just had to do relatively little harm (ie, not prevent survival to reproductive age or fecundity). So maybe there’s no ‘why’ … like the Manx cat, we just have no tail. 
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Tails… you win.
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“I am a man who regrets the loss of his fur and his tail.” - Loren Eiseley
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I am not an ape, just a temporarily embarrassed monkey.
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Thereby hangs a tail…
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We kept slamming the doors on them.
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Any chance of getting an image credit? That’s not the kind of picture I can just browse away from.
EDIT: Found it through TinEye. Deeply unsatisfying. So many questions…
This is true but addressed in the article…they note that tails are really useful so you would expect losing them to provide a significant disadvantage, and the mutation that shortens them can cause other defects, which presumably means there is something else that offsets that. So at the very least you could ask what it is about apes that exempted them from needing tails the way most other primates do. There are a few other exceptions, like Barbary macaques, that I imagine it would help to look at.
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He clearly does have a tailor, though.
Precisely why we should put a tail on him.
Lots of work for tailors, then.
Or entomologists, tracking migrating flies.
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“That’s the next outstanding question: What on earth would the advantage be?”
Not having to put up with this shit all day long:
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Was going to be more disappointed in what this site has become if some hadn’t posted this.
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That’s my guess. Becoming bipedal shifted our hips to be more parallel to our spine than a quadruped. Having our tail re-curve inward (to become the coccyx) might have provided additional balance and stability. It may also have a hygiene benefit, since a tail straight downward is at risk of being contaminated with pee and poo.
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