Here’s a fun experiment to try. If you have a cat or a dog, place a treat in a thin, empty container and see which paw they use to retrieve it.
If the science is correct, most males will favour their left paw, while most females will favour their right. Many animals are ambilateral (the non-human equivalent of being ambidextrous), and sometimes there’s a sex bias to these preferences.
Other times, differences exist at the species level. Around 85–90 per cent of us humans favour our right hands, and we’re not alone. Among primates, most chimps, gorillas, baboons and ring-tailed lemurs also prefer to use their right hands, but Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkeys, de Brazza’s monkeys and orangutans tend to use their left.
This plays to the idea that handedness is linked to lifestyle. Among those listed, the right-handers are predominantly ground dwellers, while the left-handers like to hang out in trees.
According to the postural origin theory of handedness, early primates lived in trees and used their dominant left hand to grab food and branches, while holding the tree with their right.
Then, as they adapted to life on the ground, they started to use their right hand more, which then became dominant over time. The theory has its critics, who point to the fact that some primates don’t follow the rules.
Slow lorises are arboreal yet favour their right hands, while Hanuman langurs live on the ground and are mainly left-handed. Adding to the confusion, glossy black cockatoos hold seed cones with their left foot, walruses preferentially use their right flipper to forage for clams and red-necked wallabies prefer to use their right paw to reach for food.
For the record, my cat failed to comply with the experiment, with either right or left paw, and instead miaowed loudly until she was fed.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Marlow Smith, via email) 'Can animals be right- or left-pawed?'
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