-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Why Study Handedness in Lemurs?
Are you a lefty or a righty?
Handedness (otherwise known as “hand preference” or “hand dominance”) has been studied in the field of psychology for over a century, but we still don’t really know how or why it exists. Why are most people right-handed? Why are some people left-handed? Why even have a dominant hand at all?
Left-handedness is associated with many unique traits. Musicians, athletes, autistic people, and people with "gifted" IQ scores are all more likely to be left-handed than the general population. How can that be?
Humans are not the only species that exhibit handedness. Handedness has also been studied in other species like dogs, monkeys, and even mice. While most humans (about 90%) are right-handed, less than 60% of domestic dogs, for instance, are right-handed (or should we say right-pawed?).
Dividing up tasks between hands might allow our brains to specialize better. When tasks in our brains are split into different sides (for example, the right side of the brain usually being the one responsible for language) it is called lateralization. Therefore, looking at handedness and other aspects of lateralization might give us insight on our ability to use tools and to communicate using language. Studying handedness might give us more information about how these traits evolved.
Lemurs are primates that evolved before humans (branching off from the other primates 63 million years ago) and can give us a glimpse into what our ancestors may have been like. Therefore, by studying limb preference in lemurs, we can better understand the “why”, “how”, and “when” handedness and its variation between individuals and populations evolved.
Next, let's meet the lemurs!