prehensility

Prehensility is the property of an appendage or organ that enables it to grasp, hold, or manipulate objects. The term comes from Latin prehendere, to seize, with the suffix -ility. In biology, prehensility describes a functional adaptation that allows an animal to grasp or manipulate things with a limb, tail, or other organ, often aiding locomotion, foraging, and stability in complex environments, especially trees.

A prehensile organ is typically muscular and highly flexible, sometimes with specialized surfaces such as pads or grasping structures that enhance grip. Prehensile capabilities are most familiar in the animal kingdom among tails, limbs, and occasionally beaks or tongues used to seize objects. Notable examples include prehensile tails in several New World monkeys, particularly among atelids such as spider and woolly monkeys, which can coil and anchor the tail around branches. Some marsupials and anteaters also possess prehensile tails or limbs that assist in climbing and feeding. Invertebrates such as cephalopods use their arms and suckered tentacles in a prehensile fashion to capture prey and hold objects.

Prehensility is distinct from general dexterity or grasping ability; it implies a specialized, often independent, grasping function that can act as a reversible limb. It has evolved independently across multiple lineages as an adaptation to arboreal or foraging lifestyles. See also: prehensile tail, dexterity, arboreal locomotion, functional morphology.