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As a extension to this video, I know of a stody in which many animals (mostly reptiles) were studied in regard to injury likelihood, and it appeared that left handed animals are a lot more likely to get injured compared to right handed ones
I'm considered right handed, right hand it's faster, r feet it's more accurate, left hand it's stronger and left feet I jump with, so just because I write with my right so I'm right handed? I can't do as good in the same task as the other side is.
I have owned parrots for over 20 years. It is generally believed that parrots have a tendancy to use their right foot for standing and the left foot for holding and picking up.
I think it varies by species. Some species have been documented to have the same 90%/10% split of handedness favoring the left foot for grasping and manipulating. Others favor the right, and others don't show handedness at all
There's a wonderful scene in Attenborough's Life of Mammals, in the final episode talking about great apes. He's at an orangutan sanctuary and watching a mama who had been brought up in captivity but was rehabilitated and lived in the wild, only to return to the sanctuary as and when she felt like it. (As far as I know, it's not the same one who nicks the boat, or the one who - of her own volition - loves to wash socks 🤷🏻♀️) One thing she had picked up as a youngster was tool use. Human tool use. She absolutely loves it, despite not being able to make anything (at least with the things seen in the scene.) She was sitting in front of him using a hammer and nails, and then a saw (which she'd taken off her wild son who also loves using tools - no human interference there, he copies her), and as he points out, she is clearly left handed. On seeing that the first time (30ish years ago? I can't remember exactly when it came out but I saw it on its first TV run. I have the DVD set - I have virtually everyone of his sets lol - and now know it off by heart), it opened my eyes to initially mammals being a lot more like us than I'd ever thought, then over time, and with watching more documentaries etc, I added more and more species to the "we do that!" list. If ever there was a fairly abstract piece of evidence for evolution, behavioural similarities such as handedness must be one.
My dog had a preference to making U-turns to the left. (After retrieving stick land or water, bathroom breaks, etc) Noticed it in first couple weeks and she did it her whole life.
may i ask which breed your dog is? because i do know that horses take longer strides on one side, with the right side usually being preferred. this is why race tracks almost always run counter clockwise, turning left is easier for them. thus it would make sense if the same was true for dogs that were bred for racing, which would explain why your dog prefers to turn left.
Where are you from? I wonder if they might be copying their people, since humans tend to stay on the same side of a hall way that you’d drive on. And so U turns would always be left, Just a though
I’m curious for dogs how much it’s impacted by the owner. For example one of the tests was which paw they used when asked to shake. If their owner was right handed the dog might be more likely to shake using their left paw since that would be side their owner is holding their hand out to.
My dog refuses to shake right handed like me even after months of grabbing her right paw when teaching her to shake. And she is a very smart dog who learns fast and can even "communicate" what she wants. She always proffers the left paw. She tends to circle to the left when getting bed ready too.
One interesting example they didn't mention is elephants where you can actually see if they are right or left tusked cause the dominant tusk is shorter from wear.
@@JohnFleshman my dog only uses his left paw to shake, but it's probably because he has a shoulder injury on that side that never healed correctly and he doesn't want to balance his weight with his weaker leg. He also doesn't like it when you actually grab his paw; he'll pull his paw away when you reach for it.
I'm not really ambidextrous - it's absolutely the task thing; I use my left hand for nearly any precision task (writing, holding a fork, etc), but I clearly favor my right hand for more strength-reliant tasks (catching or throwing a ball, swinging a hammer, pulling open a stuck door). And then, despite the precision, I always use right-hand for computer mouse, because that's the side the mouse was always on when I got to play with computers.
Yes. It can be hard to work out handedness. Consider taking a snooker shot. Since a right hander uses the left hand for fine directional adjustments, if you didn't know better you might think that means the player is a lefty.
I basically exclusively use electronics in the "right hand" configuration. When you have to use both hands anyways I don't see why people would favor one way over the other.
I remember confusing the heck out of the nurses and CNAs when I broke my right arm. They were expecting me to have difficulty eating with my left hand, but I had 0 problems since I usually have the fork in my left hand and my knife in the right. They kept wondering if I was a southpaw or ambidextrous. 😕 only when eating.
@@asmith8692do you have many left handed people in your family? 1/3 are in my maternal and paternal sides. I'm definitely right preferred, but I'm very good with my left compared to other right handed people. Doing surgery, I could switch to my left more easily than others, though not as good as the right. Playing VR with friends, I was surprised how rarely they used their non dominant hand. Anecdotes, but interesting!!!
Hand dominance by task: 3:21 I started playing the violin from a very young age (5), so much that it affected my physical development and hand preferences. I can write with both hands, though right is more precise. I use my left hand for finger dexterity, right hand for strength, and to this day my left hand is more gracile with thinner fingers.
Reid Reimers: "Me being right-handed meant I never had to worry about the side of my hand being covered in pencil lead." Me, also right-handed: "Wait... you can have your side of the hand *_not covered_* in pencil lead?"
The whole handedness thing being dependant on task makes complete sense to me. I write left handed but throw a ball with my right hand (can throw with both but subconscious preference is right).
Same here! I write left, but do most other tasks 50/50 left or right. A lot of it has to do with being taught a task by a right-handed person, or like with scissors I didn't have access to lefties so I learned to cut right-handed
@@EifjcksjskckI wish I had learned to cut with my right hand growing up. Instead I got into the habit of flipping my scissors, then spent my entire life wondering why I suck at cutting lol
Another example of how we & animals are alike. I remember in the '60's when Dr. Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using sticks as tools. The initial disbelief was widespread. Humans hate it when we are shown time & again "we ain't so different" from "lesser beings". Thanks to SciShow for these informative posts.
I wonder how octopod tentacles having their own brains factors into this. It may be more accurate to say that those tentacles are the most aggressive rather than the most preferred. 🐙🤓
I was kinda thinking something similar. But maybe not aggression. It might be because they have a more distributed brain. They may specialize slightly more. Or maybe express interests differently. Like that arm is more interested in the task. Something like that. There has to be something that allows them to choose an arm or two that's not.. closest arm or round Robin arm or something.
I work with a lefty northern fur seal and I've been looking for research on pinniped "handedness" and have been struggling to find anything. So I love hearing about the research on it in other mammals for a frame of reference
If you look into more than just the hands in humans, there are also more preferences, like: the preferred direction when standing on a skateboard, on which side you sleep, how you tilt your head when kissing, which eye to close when only using one or winking, .... Often depends on the task or indivudual physical properties. And of course culture can also influence it (like having a "dirty" hand).
I used to have horses about 25 years ago, and it was often said that they were left-handed (hooved?). It was also suggested that this was good because it balanced out against their mostly right-handed riders. I don’t know if anyone actually set out to prove any of that, though.
You should see right handed - left eye dominant people when they realize they can't use their dominant hand and need to go out of their way to get left handed or ambidextrous guns😂 I'm all left side. Probably the most noticable in karate otherwise I just work with the tools I've got. I've gotten pretty good at using right handed scissors to the point that I can use bad ones better than righties😂
One of the other potential aspects for dogs is that dog paw preference could be a reflection of human actions towards them, rather than use the rotated version of their owners movement they mimic the observed same side as their owners. If you had asked me fifteen years ago, I would have said I was a righty. Now I know I'm definitely an ambi, with a better trained right hand than left due to societal pressures. My youngest is a lefty, but due to everyone around him bowling with their right hand, he bowls right handed at the moment in cricket. Most likely, he's an ambi just like me since he would swap hands constantly while drawing before reaching learning to write age. I wonder how much of it comes back to people "choosing" their hand early in life, and then being taught that way through early childhood rather than letting ambis write with both hands.
According to my parents, my mom made a conscious effort to always give me things in my left hand when I was very young; but even from pacifier age I would always pass it over to my right hand to use it. So your kid not having a preference when old enough to draw is pretty strong evidence that he's underlying ambi, imho.
So interesting! Our team also talked about sea otters and how they hold hands while sleeping and also keep their favourite rock under their arm, apart from being super cute and climate heroes!
I'm surprised there was no mention on the "handedness" of crustaceans; as they seem to very obviously prefer one claw for certain tasks over the other.
4:56 it was stated that the bimanual tube task showed 80% of apes had a preferred hand. of those apes, i'm assuming there was a preference for the right hand? that would make sense, since the other tasks mentioned at 4:25 (picking up scattered food, and precision grabbing nuts) showed right hand dominance. also, the 5th source listed in the description (from the "frontiers in psych" website) explains that a bimanual tube tasks shows right hand dominance.
If I go surfing, left foot forward. If I waterski, right foot forward. If I skateboard, left foot forward. Fine motor skill, right hand Grip strength, left hand A lot of the time, it’s the task that determines which limb I use.
I immediately thought of asking if you could do a handstand on a skateboard, and say which hand goes "forward," but that's going a little too far! 🤣 Same case here - I interact with touch screens left handed, but use a mouse or pen right handed. I hold a chef knife with my right hand; but when I use a fork and smaller knife (such as a steak knife) the knife goes in my left hand. Miss Manners hates me. 😁
it's an efficiency thing, generally you don't need all your limbs to be incredibly precise, after all what is the point of being able to write with both hands, you might as well just maintain the delicate neuronal connections on one dominant hand. Not only is it more efficient but it's also faster to process and react because if you drop your phone you don't need to think about which hand you are going to try and catch it with, your dominant hand is already doing it saving precious milliseconds by not needing to get the ok from your brain to try and do it or choosing which hand to use. All of this is pretty obvious if you think about it.
I'm pretty sure most dogs develop handedness before humans start teaching them to shake. Also, there's no difference when shaking a dog's paw from left or right so idk why that would cause a preference
I'm ambidextrous - but my limb usage is mostly assigned via tasks or in the way I approach things (say I'm heading to the stairs - the foot I start off on depends on if I'm coming at it from the north or south). That said, while I do usually use my right hand for writing (more practice with it in general means slightly neater, and definitely faster, writing), my hand _still_ gets covered in graphite or ink.
Right handed guitar players are in many ways more capable with their left hands (in terms of playing the guitar or any other instrument which requires precise movement of both hands), having to learn to be more precise with their non-dominant hand before the other can catch up
I'm right handed for writing. Left armed and left legged . So I use my left arm for most things but right hand only for writing and drawing. I also lead with my left leg when walking / jumping .
Small sample sizes definitely affect data! Take my sister’s family- she and her husband have three kids. In this family of five, three people have red hair and are left handed. So when we extrapolate to all of humanity, we can see that far more than 10% of the population is left handed! I am just happy that her kiddos have a mom who knows about being left handed and will be supportive.
It really does depend on the task, sometimes! I'm another example, where I'm righthanded but can one-handed-type better with my left (probably due to practice). Then there's my legs, which are nearly ambidextrous for "picking things up off the floor with my feet" (with slight preference to stand on my left leg and grab with my right), but I REALLY need a left-foot-forward snowboard (so far I can't 'stand' on my left leg when it's UPHILL, for some reason).
whelks have shells that curl either right or left. Lightning whelks, for example, have sinistral shells. so it makes sense that chirality is a thing beyond humans. Definitely cool that octopuses may have a preferred pair of arms, though.
I have right footedness. I have both hands but if I can grab something with my right foot it is often easier than bending my entire body mass towards the ground. I have no ability to kick or grasp objects with my left foot. I walk well, I balance easily on either foot. If I try to grasp or kick an object with my left foot, my left foot just twitches aimlessly like it's confused and doesn't understand what I am "on-about".
Maybe because humans developed advanced tool making among an array of many other things, it required fine tuned motor skills and humans began to use their dominant hand for specific tasks, which spread over thousands of years
I am right-handed, but I have a lefty bow for archery. That's because aiming is primarily done with the eyes, and I have a preference for my left eye. It's definitely more common to have a preference for your right eye, though. Anecdotally it's ~90% righties.
Many years back I got curious about the which paw question about my cat. I did a lot of hiding treats under things to see which he would use to knock it away to get to the treat. On that it was his left every time. If I placed a heavy object on the window sill he showed not inclination to change to coming at it from the other direction. He would use whichever paw was closer to the window to get in behind the object and push it off. In a play fight with the other cat he seemed to lead with his right.
Just this morning I was remembering being thunderstruck at the blackboard in 10th grade geometry by my friend Leah when she took two pieces of chalk and simultaneously wrote her name in perfect script, forward with her right-backward with her left hands, as though in a mirror! Now I'm picturing an octopus doing it with all eight‼🐙
Thing to grab is on left -> Left hand has a job. Thing to grab is on right -> Right hand has a job. Thing to grab is right smack in the middle -> Both hands try to fight over it to show dominance over the other, and the battle usually ends when the thing gets slapped across the room and breaks against the wall.
Octopuses have bilateral symmetry, a bit disappointed starfish were not on the list because they do show they have a preferred side where they lead their movement with
I think using one paw first when walking is the anti-favourite because animals should use the first paw for balance while the other one is ready to aim and swipe at prey.
I used to substitute teach, and it’s always good to have fascinating magic tricks to impress students. Most classes in my experience were made up of around 30 students. I would tell the students that three of their number were left-handed. I asked the lefties to raise their hands; most likely 2 boys and one girl qualified. No magic-just genetic randomness.
I drove my old elementary gym teacher insane when we played baseball. I'm right handed but I batted left and caught right and in a pinch I could use a lefty glove with apparently little change in my catch accuracy, despite feeling very awkward doing so.
Well, "handedness" applies to other limbs as well, in humans as well as other creatures. Which leg or foot do you push off with when walking? Which leg do you plant with when jumping? Which leg do you kick with? Etc.
* So I've never had to deal with pencil all over the side of my hand...* Me: Spending way too long contemplating why is right handedness has prevented him from Doing artwork, That layer of pencil is a universal occurrence.
Shooters have "handedness" too and it's not always the same hand and same eye. My uncle was right handed but left eye dominant so he shot noticeably better left handed because that's the EYE that he used best. He did not need/use glasses for most of his life or have one eye sharper than the other, it's just that the left eye is the one that instinctively focused on far away objects. There's a quick/easy test to determine which eye is dominant because it's not really something to consider outside of shooting sports where you need to be quick and accurate.
The pencil lead thing messed me up throughout my student life. I'm actually right handed but my mom is left handed, and she taught me to write, so now I hold the pencil wrong (in my right hand but held like a lefty) and no attempts to change the habit have been effective.
Fun fact: Macho Man Randy Savage was an ambidextrous minor league athlete before getting into wrestling. At one point he became a lefty pitcher because of issue with right arm
The octopus not only has a better evolved eye than ours, it has a CRAZY skill level for not having a "real" brain - I'm being overly anthropocentric, there, I know - and we have no clue how they do it! We had better hope they don't rise up to take over, considering how terribly we treat many of the different octopus species! 😂
Handedness is kinda weird to me because it doesn't always correlate to footedness. Like You can be left handed but right footed or right footed and right handed.
I feel the difference task thing I write, crochet and do most tasks lefty but I knit (I can’t technically do both but right is more comfortable) and kick righty.
Octopus arm meeting..." We know we can't all put ourselves in the same exact place! Let's not forget...Suckers 64 through 111 the last time we were at The Vents? (General disapproving moan) SO are there any other of us who will volunteer to be the designated leader?"🐙 Btw...my cat's lateralization is on whichever side is most near to angling for food attention.😉 Fabulous video❤❤
I’m sorry, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the title was “See this tentacle? It’s actually shorter than the other tentacles, but you can’t really tell, especially when I twirl them like this!”
It's weird studies cause it's preference and even ppl not always use 1 hand, sometimes you use hand that is closer to the task you doing than "main hand" necessarily 🤷🏼♀️💁🏼♀️😅
When talking about the blue whale, it is said in the video that they do a "barrel roll", but that is not what is depicted in the following animation. And it is probably not what they do, since that would take them away from the path of food. I think it should instead be an "aileron roll".
Fascinating episode. Interestingly, my right hand is my dominant _hand_, but some other tests show that the rest of my body has a preference for left-sided laterality. And I had a female cat who had her right hind paw amputated, so she generally started moving with her left foreleg first, but there were a couple of other things she did that made me think she originally had right-side laterality.
I was made right-handed. I had an accident at 4½yo., I hurt my right hand. When I went through therapy, they made me color/write with it. Now I'm right-handed, but sometimes when I learn something new I'll learn it left-handed. I fish left-handed, but stand right-handed while holding a baseball bat left-handed.
I wonder if they collected data on the relative strength of the preferred limbs. I also just realized i have been assuming most animals can gain muscle tissue through use but maybe that is not the case.
I clicked on this video to learn about octopuses and get slapped in the face with left handed things like getting your hand covered in pencil led 😭 it happens ALL. THE. TIME.
Flyfishing requires more precision, doesn't it? From the times I've watched people practising fly-fishing casting it appears that way to me as a layperson anyway.
Right now, LMNT is offering SciShow viewers a free sample pack with any order. That’s 8 single serving packets free with any LMNT order. It’s a great way to try all 8 flavors or share with a friend! Get yours at DrinkLMNT.com/SciShow.
As a extension to this video, I know of a stody in which many animals (mostly reptiles) were studied in regard to injury likelihood, and it appeared that left handed animals are a lot more likely to get injured compared to right handed ones
Whales are Ambi-Mandibulates...switching one side of the mouth to the other...otherwise, Lefties or Righties! Lol
@@yahavseligman4855😅
Does LMNT have what plants crave, though?
I'm considered right handed, right hand it's faster, r feet it's more accurate, left hand it's stronger and left feet I jump with, so just because I write with my right so I'm right handed? I can't do as good in the same task as the other side is.
I have owned parrots for over 20 years. It is generally believed that parrots have a tendancy to use their right foot for standing and the left foot for holding and picking up.
I've seen both. Almost an exact 50-50 mix.
@@apocalypse487 Some scientists have tried to create an exact number. There are almost 340 species of parrots and many exceptions.
I think it varies by species. Some species have been documented to have the same 90%/10% split of handedness favoring the left foot for grasping and manipulating. Others favor the right, and others don't show handedness at all
There's a wonderful scene in Attenborough's Life of Mammals, in the final episode talking about great apes. He's at an orangutan sanctuary and watching a mama who had been brought up in captivity but was rehabilitated and lived in the wild, only to return to the sanctuary as and when she felt like it. (As far as I know, it's not the same one who nicks the boat, or the one who - of her own volition - loves to wash socks 🤷🏻♀️)
One thing she had picked up as a youngster was tool use. Human tool use. She absolutely loves it, despite not being able to make anything (at least with the things seen in the scene.) She was sitting in front of him using a hammer and nails, and then a saw (which she'd taken off her wild son who also loves using tools - no human interference there, he copies her), and as he points out, she is clearly left handed.
On seeing that the first time (30ish years ago? I can't remember exactly when it came out but I saw it on its first TV run. I have the DVD set - I have virtually everyone of his sets lol - and now know it off by heart), it opened my eyes to initially mammals being a lot more like us than I'd ever thought, then over time, and with watching more documentaries etc, I added more and more species to the "we do that!" list. If ever there was a fairly abstract piece of evidence for evolution, behavioural similarities such as handedness must be one.
"This is my fish punching tentacle!"
My dog had a preference to making U-turns to the left. (After retrieving stick land or water, bathroom breaks, etc) Noticed it in first couple weeks and she did it her whole life.
may i ask which breed your dog is?
because i do know that horses take longer strides on one side, with the right side usually being preferred.
this is why race tracks almost always run counter clockwise, turning left is easier for them.
thus it would make sense if the same was true for dogs that were bred for racing, which would explain why your dog prefers to turn left.
@@windhelmguard5295 Half lab other half was beagle w/something else.
Where are you from? I wonder if they might be copying their people, since humans tend to stay on the same side of a hall way that you’d drive on. And so U turns would always be left, Just a though
@@MissAlissaxX I'm in Wisconsin so that's possible. But I usually don't do U-turns (I just go around the block). Also she was doing it at 8 weeks old.
I’m curious for dogs how much it’s impacted by the owner. For example one of the tests was which paw they used when asked to shake. If their owner was right handed the dog might be more likely to shake using their left paw since that would be side their owner is holding their hand out to.
My dog refuses to shake right handed like me even after months of grabbing her right paw when teaching her to shake. And she is a very smart dog who learns fast and can even "communicate" what she wants. She always proffers the left paw. She tends to circle to the left when getting bed ready too.
@@JohnFleshmanyes yes entertainment this is what they want 😂
One interesting example they didn't mention is elephants where you can actually see if they are right or left tusked cause the dominant tusk is shorter from wear.
@@JohnFleshman my dog only uses his left paw to shake, but it's probably because he has a shoulder injury on that side that never healed correctly and he doesn't want to balance his weight with his weaker leg. He also doesn't like it when you actually grab his paw; he'll pull his paw away when you reach for it.
@@MogamiKyoko13 My dog has been left pawed since I very first got her. when she was still a pup.
I'm not really ambidextrous - it's absolutely the task thing; I use my left hand for nearly any precision task (writing, holding a fork, etc), but I clearly favor my right hand for more strength-reliant tasks (catching or throwing a ball, swinging a hammer, pulling open a stuck door). And then, despite the precision, I always use right-hand for computer mouse, because that's the side the mouse was always on when I got to play with computers.
Yes. It can be hard to work out handedness. Consider taking a snooker shot. Since a right hander uses the left hand for fine directional adjustments, if you didn't know better you might think that means the player is a lefty.
I’m the opposite, my right hand does the precision stuff & my left for strength or weight related (until 2015).😂
I basically exclusively use electronics in the "right hand" configuration. When you have to use both hands anyways I don't see why people would favor one way over the other.
I remember confusing the heck out of the nurses and CNAs when I broke my right arm. They were expecting me to have difficulty eating with my left hand, but I had 0 problems since I usually have the fork in my left hand and my knife in the right. They kept wondering if I was a southpaw or ambidextrous.
😕 only when eating.
@@asmith8692do you have many left handed people in your family?
1/3 are in my maternal and paternal sides. I'm definitely right preferred, but I'm very good with my left compared to other right handed people.
Doing surgery, I could switch to my left more easily than others, though not as good as the right.
Playing VR with friends, I was surprised how rarely they used their non dominant hand.
Anecdotes, but interesting!!!
Hand dominance by task: 3:21 I started playing the violin from a very young age (5), so much that it affected my physical development and hand preferences. I can write with both hands, though right is more precise. I use my left hand for finger dexterity, right hand for strength, and to this day my left hand is more gracile with thinner fingers.
"At fist glance, all of the octopuses arms look basically I-Tentacle" 🤭
Slipper slapper is a new phrase I never thought of. It's now one of my favourites.
Reid Reimers: "Me being right-handed meant I never had to worry about the side of my hand being covered in pencil lead."
Me, also right-handed: "Wait... you can have your side of the hand *_not covered_* in pencil lead?"
The whole handedness thing being dependant on task makes complete sense to me.
I write left handed but throw a ball with my right hand (can throw with both but subconscious preference is right).
Same here! I write left, but do most other tasks 50/50 left or right. A lot of it has to do with being taught a task by a right-handed person, or like with scissors I didn't have access to lefties so I learned to cut right-handed
I am right handed, but left eyed, so I do occasional tasks that require aim left handed.
@@EifjcksjskckI wish I had learned to cut with my right hand growing up. Instead I got into the habit of flipping my scissors, then spent my entire life wondering why I suck at cutting lol
I never realized that the leg I lead with going up and down stairs corresponded to my right handedness. I've never even noticed, but yeah🤯
Another example of how we & animals are alike. I remember in the '60's when Dr. Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using sticks as tools. The initial disbelief was widespread. Humans hate it when we are shown time & again "we ain't so different" from "lesser beings".
Thanks to SciShow for these informative posts.
I wonder how octopod tentacles having their own brains factors into this. It may be more accurate to say that those tentacles are the most aggressive rather than the most preferred. 🐙🤓
Maybe it's love and not aggressiveness, dopamine or other chemicals
Smarter arm???
Or possibly which arm forms more neural connections with the central ring brain.
I was kinda thinking something similar. But maybe not aggression. It might be because they have a more distributed brain. They may specialize slightly more. Or maybe express interests differently. Like that arm is more interested in the task. Something like that. There has to be something that allows them to choose an arm or two that's not.. closest arm or round Robin arm or something.
Octopus do not have tentacles. Now what?
I work with a lefty northern fur seal and I've been looking for research on pinniped "handedness" and have been struggling to find anything. So I love hearing about the research on it in other mammals for a frame of reference
This is the coolest comment, I need to know more 😭 💗
Sounds like a great thesis project!!
If you look into more than just the hands in humans, there are also more preferences, like: the preferred direction when standing on a skateboard, on which side you sleep, how you tilt your head when kissing, which eye to close when only using one or winking, .... Often depends on the task or indivudual physical properties. And of course culture can also influence it (like having a "dirty" hand).
just shake whatever hand the octopus offers you
That tree kangaroo is adorable.
I used to have horses about 25 years ago, and it was often said that they were left-handed (hooved?). It was also suggested that this was good because it balanced out against their mostly right-handed riders. I don’t know if anyone actually set out to prove any of that, though.
Hooves are infused hands. So yeah.
9:55 the octopus❤
My hero!! 🎉🎉🎉
11:57 there’s SO MANY things we ignorantly decided are human characteristics…. We seem to keep finding out that we’re not that special.
A mate of mine was left handed but right eyed, it was weird watching him try to fire a rifle.
You should see right handed - left eye dominant people when they realize they can't use their dominant hand and need to go out of their way to get left handed or ambidextrous guns😂
I'm all left side. Probably the most noticable in karate otherwise I just work with the tools I've got. I've gotten pretty good at using right handed scissors to the point that I can use bad ones better than righties😂
@@solsystem1342they not bad ones, just right handed 🤷🏼♀️ I really don't get why ppl made stuff sided instead of leaving it uniform lol
One of the other potential aspects for dogs is that dog paw preference could be a reflection of human actions towards them, rather than use the rotated version of their owners movement they mimic the observed same side as their owners.
If you had asked me fifteen years ago, I would have said I was a righty. Now I know I'm definitely an ambi, with a better trained right hand than left due to societal pressures. My youngest is a lefty, but due to everyone around him bowling with their right hand, he bowls right handed at the moment in cricket. Most likely, he's an ambi just like me since he would swap hands constantly while drawing before reaching learning to write age. I wonder how much of it comes back to people "choosing" their hand early in life, and then being taught that way through early childhood rather than letting ambis write with both hands.
According to my parents, my mom made a conscious effort to always give me things in my left hand when I was very young; but even from pacifier age I would always pass it over to my right hand to use it. So your kid not having a preference when old enough to draw is pretty strong evidence that he's underlying ambi, imho.
So interesting! Our team also talked about sea otters and how they hold hands while sleeping and also keep their favourite rock under their arm, apart from being super cute and climate heroes!
I'm surprised there was no mention on the "handedness" of crustaceans; as they seem to very obviously prefer one claw for certain tasks over the other.
Thanks for another awesome Octopus 🐙🦑 video. They are my favorite sea creatures and I love learning about them and seeing them.
4:56 it was stated that the bimanual tube task showed 80% of apes had a preferred hand. of those apes, i'm assuming there was a preference for the right hand? that would make sense, since the other tasks mentioned at 4:25 (picking up scattered food, and precision grabbing nuts) showed right hand dominance. also, the 5th source listed in the description (from the "frontiers in psych" website) explains that a bimanual tube tasks shows right hand dominance.
If I go surfing, left foot forward.
If I waterski, right foot forward.
If I skateboard, left foot forward.
Fine motor skill, right hand
Grip strength, left hand
A lot of the time, it’s the task that determines which limb I use.
I immediately thought of asking if you could do a handstand on a skateboard, and say which hand goes "forward," but that's going a little too far! 🤣
Same case here - I interact with touch screens left handed, but use a mouse or pen right handed.
I hold a chef knife with my right hand; but when I use a fork and smaller knife (such as a steak knife) the knife goes in my left hand. Miss Manners hates me. 😁
it's an efficiency thing, generally you don't need all your limbs to be incredibly precise, after all what is the point of being able to write with both hands, you might as well just maintain the delicate neuronal connections on one dominant hand. Not only is it more efficient but it's also faster to process and react because if you drop your phone you don't need to think about which hand you are going to try and catch it with, your dominant hand is already doing it saving precious milliseconds by not needing to get the ok from your brain to try and do it or choosing which hand to use.
All of this is pretty obvious if you think about it.
2:52 the dogs being biased against right paw.... is that because we extend our right hand to them (mostly) so they extend with their left to meet us?
I'm pretty sure most dogs develop handedness before humans start teaching them to shake. Also, there's no difference when shaking a dog's paw from left or right so idk why that would cause a preference
It was just a high thought anyways@@solsystem1342
I'm ambidextrous - but my limb usage is mostly assigned via tasks or in the way I approach things (say I'm heading to the stairs - the foot I start off on depends on if I'm coming at it from the north or south). That said, while I do usually use my right hand for writing (more practice with it in general means slightly neater, and definitely faster, writing), my hand _still_ gets covered in graphite or ink.
Always learn something new in these videos, thank you!
Me...? Krill-wise, I'm ambi-mouthed
Right handed guitar players are in many ways more capable with their left hands (in terms of playing the guitar or any other instrument which requires precise movement of both hands), having to learn to be more precise with their non-dominant hand before the other can catch up
Playing bass may be where I got some of my odd mixed dominance from. ...Or did my oddities make playing bass much easier?
I'm right handed for writing. Left armed and left legged . So I use my left arm for most things but right hand only for writing and drawing. I also lead with my left leg when walking / jumping .
Cephlapods are too smart 🤓
Or just smart enough…🤔🤷♀️
Small sample sizes definitely affect data! Take my sister’s family- she and her husband have three kids. In this family of five, three people have red hair and are left handed. So when we extrapolate to all of humanity, we can see that far more than 10% of the population is left handed!
I am just happy that her kiddos have a mom who knows about being left handed and will be supportive.
It really does depend on the task, sometimes!
I'm another example, where I'm righthanded but can one-handed-type better with my left (probably due to practice). Then there's my legs, which are nearly ambidextrous for "picking things up off the floor with my feet" (with slight preference to stand on my left leg and grab with my right), but I REALLY need a left-foot-forward snowboard (so far I can't 'stand' on my left leg when it's UPHILL, for some reason).
So does this mean the octopus uses his favorite arms to tend his garden?
Another great video from scishow... you always have interesting info, I gotta hand it to you! 😉
whelks have shells that curl either right or left. Lightning whelks, for example, have sinistral shells. so it makes sense that chirality is a thing beyond humans. Definitely cool that octopuses may have a preferred pair of arms, though.
I have right footedness. I have both hands but if I can grab something with my right foot it is often easier than bending my entire body mass towards the ground. I have no ability to kick or grasp objects with my left foot. I walk well, I balance easily on either foot. If I try to grasp or kick an object with my left foot, my left foot just twitches aimlessly like it's confused and doesn't understand what I am "on-about".
Maybe because humans developed advanced tool making among an array of many other things, it required fine tuned motor skills and humans began to use their dominant hand for specific tasks, which spread over thousands of years
I am right-handed, but I have a lefty bow for archery. That's because aiming is primarily done with the eyes, and I have a preference for my left eye. It's definitely more common to have a preference for your right eye, though. Anecdotally it's ~90% righties.
Many years back I got curious about the which paw question about my cat. I did a lot of hiding treats under things to see which he would use to knock it away to get to the treat. On that it was his left every time. If I placed a heavy object on the window sill he showed not inclination to change to coming at it from the other direction. He would use whichever paw was closer to the window to get in behind the object and push it off. In a play fight with the other cat he seemed to lead with his right.
Just this morning I was remembering being thunderstruck at the blackboard in 10th grade geometry by my friend Leah when she took two pieces of chalk and simultaneously wrote her name in perfect script, forward with her right-backward with her left hands, as though in a mirror! Now I'm picturing an octopus doing it with all eight‼🐙
The dog portion of this episode is totally aDeweyble💖
Thing to grab is on left -> Left hand has a job.
Thing to grab is on right -> Right hand has a job.
Thing to grab is right smack in the middle -> Both hands try to fight over it to show dominance over the other, and the battle usually ends when the thing gets slapped across the room and breaks against the wall.
horses tend to be left handed. it's generally harder to "teach them" to take the right lead at the canter.
Perigrine falcons perfer to dive onto the left of birds, I read, once.
Parrots supposedly have a foot preference.
Always interesting!
It fills me with joy to learn that there is an animal named the red-necked wallaby. If this isn’t the state mascot of Alabama, it should be.
Octopus couples: He's a second leg, I'm a sixth leg.... Makes it so hard to sit together at the family dinners.
It's been noted that stocked trout will preferentially swim with their right side towards the nearest bank. 😉
ua-cam.com/users/shortsBmc9NFfhx74?si=D2JNeE6rFH1WqFBQ
Octopuses have bilateral symmetry, a bit disappointed starfish were not on the list because they do show they have a preferred side where they lead their movement with
Cats have favoured paws - some can only open doors that open on that particular side
I skip the whole hassle of "handedness" by picking everything up with my butt cheeks.
Pick up my leg
Yes but(t) which cheek is the dom.
I initially didn't watch this video at work because I thought the reference was to his hectocotylus.
I think using one paw first when walking is the anti-favourite because animals should use the first paw for balance while the other one is ready to aim and swipe at prey.
Oh, kinda like skateboarding?
Im right handed and right footed, yet i write with my left hand.
I used to substitute teach, and it’s always good to have fascinating magic tricks to impress students. Most classes in my experience were made up of around 30 students. I would tell the students that three of their number were left-handed. I asked the lefties to raise their hands; most likely 2 boys and one girl qualified. No magic-just genetic randomness.
As a left hander I can't use left handed scissors.
I drove my old elementary gym teacher insane when we played baseball. I'm right handed but I batted left and caught right and in a pinch I could use a lefty glove with apparently little change in my catch accuracy, despite feeling very awkward doing so.
Well, "handedness" applies to other limbs as well, in humans as well as other creatures.
Which leg or foot do you push off with when walking? Which leg do you plant with when jumping? Which leg do you kick with? Etc.
* So I've never had to deal with pencil all over the side of my hand...*
Me: Spending way too long contemplating why is right handedness has prevented him from Doing artwork, That layer of pencil is a universal occurrence.
My sister is the only right handed person in our family.
So one favorite arm and seven "not-so-favorite" arms? 🤔
...Makes sense, I guess.
Shooters have "handedness" too and it's not always the same hand and same eye. My uncle was right handed but left eye dominant so he shot noticeably better left handed because that's the EYE that he used best. He did not need/use glasses for most of his life or have one eye sharper than the other, it's just that the left eye is the one that instinctively focused on far away objects. There's a quick/easy test to determine which eye is dominant because it's not really something to consider outside of shooting sports where you need to be quick and accurate.
The pencil lead thing messed me up throughout my student life. I'm actually right handed but my mom is left handed, and she taught me to write, so now I hold the pencil wrong (in my right hand but held like a lefty) and no attempts to change the habit have been effective.
Fun fact: Macho Man Randy Savage was an ambidextrous minor league athlete before getting into wrestling. At one point he became a lefty pitcher because of issue with right arm
The octopus not only has a better evolved eye than ours, it has a CRAZY skill level for not having a "real" brain - I'm being overly anthropocentric, there, I know - and we have no clue how they do it! We had better hope they don't rise up to take over, considering how terribly we treat many of the different octopus species! 😂
Handedness is kinda weird to me because it doesn't always correlate to footedness. Like You can be left handed but right footed or right footed and right handed.
Hand preferences may be learned.
As a task is replicated, they replicate handedness.
The old question - nature or nurture
Well each arm has its own brain and another brain in its head
I feel the difference task thing I write, crochet and do most tasks lefty but I knit (I can’t technically do both but right is more comfortable) and kick righty.
Octopus arm meeting..." We know we can't all put ourselves in the same exact place! Let's not forget...Suckers 64 through 111 the last time we were at The Vents? (General disapproving moan) SO are there any other of us who will volunteer to be the designated leader?"🐙
Btw...my cat's lateralization is on whichever side is most near to angling for food attention.😉
Fabulous video❤❤
I’m right handed but always use my left hand to take crisps out of a bag (the precision task).
I’m sorry, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the title was “See this tentacle? It’s actually shorter than the other tentacles, but you can’t really tell, especially when I twirl them like this!”
It's weird studies cause it's preference and even ppl not always use 1 hand, sometimes you use hand that is closer to the task you doing than "main hand" necessarily 🤷🏼♀️💁🏼♀️😅
Cephalopods are incredibly intelligent 🤓!
Using both sides of your mouth equally would be called a politician.
When talking about the blue whale, it is said in the video that they do a "barrel roll", but that is not what is depicted in the following animation. And it is probably not what they do, since that would take them away from the path of food. I think it should instead be an "aileron roll".
Fascinating episode. Interestingly, my right hand is my dominant _hand_, but some other tests show that the rest of my body has a preference for left-sided laterality.
And I had a female cat who had her right hind paw amputated, so she generally started moving with her left foreleg first, but there were a couple of other things she did that made me think she originally had right-side laterality.
I was made right-handed. I had an accident at 4½yo., I hurt my right hand. When I went through therapy, they made me color/write with it. Now I'm right-handed, but sometimes when I learn something new I'll learn it left-handed. I fish left-handed, but stand right-handed while holding a baseball bat left-handed.
All of my cats were/are right-handed. Grandma, mother, and son. Not sure if the grandfather was too.
This is something I have legitimately wondered!
Ants and bees have also been shown to be lateralized.
Shaking hands with dogs could be owner influenced
Thank you 👍
My dog is right pawed (and a tri pod 😅)
I wonder if they collected data on the relative strength of the preferred limbs. I also just realized i have been assuming most animals can gain muscle tissue through use but maybe that is not the case.
I too have a favorite arm, but I prefer when it's someone else.
I clicked on this video to learn about octopuses and get slapped in the face with left handed things like getting your hand covered in pencil led 😭 it happens ALL. THE. TIME.
Interesting never knew
If an octopus loses it's favorite limb, will it return to being it's favorite, when the indistinguisable new limb grows back?
I wonder if there's a relationship between domestication and lateralisation
I'm left handed but right footed. I fish right handed with a normal rod but left handed with a fly rod so...... no idea what that correlates to!
Flyfishing requires more precision, doesn't it? From the times I've watched people practising fly-fishing casting it appears that way to me as a layperson anyway.
@@curiousnerdkitteh To be honest I think timing is more important now I think about it, which helps precision also.
So instead of being left or right handed, when you have 8 to chose from it can become interesting.
Your dogs left handed because you're right handed, its easier to shake.
Yet another thing once thought to be unique to humans that never had any positive _reason_ to be unique to humans.