And I know that I am in the same sort of company as these ladies, lol (Martina McBride and Katie Pavlich).
Posted on 11/22/2019 4:44:45 AM PST by SunkenCiv
While there's no righty or lefty gene, DNA does seem to play a role in handedness. In a recent study published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology, researchers at the University of Oxford looked at the DNA of about 400,000 people in the U.K. and found that four regions of the genome are generally associated with left-handedness. Three out of these four regions were involved in brain development and structure. Some researchers hope that studying the biological differences between lefties and righties could shed light on how the brain develops specializations in its right and left hemispheres...
Righties have dominated for as far back in the archaeological record as researchers can see, about 500,000 years, Uomini said. Neanderthals, our now-extinct human cousins, were also strongly right-handed.
That makes humans pretty strange among animals. Several nonhuman species, such as the other great apes, are individually handed, but the split between righties and lefties is typically closer to 50-50.
What caused our extreme bias toward right-handedness to evolve and persist? From an evolutionary perspective, if right-handedness evolved because it had some kind of advantage, then you might expect left-handers to disappear completely, Uomini told Live Science. She added that there are some disadvantages to being left-handed, such as higher frequencies of work accidents. Researchers also linked left-handedness to learning disabilities, in a study published in 2013 in Brain: A Journal of Neurology.
But there's a leading theory to explain why left-handers have maintained a constant minority: the fighting hypothesis.
"The idea is that in hand-to-hand combat, or in combat with weapons, there is an evolutionary advantage to being a minority left-hander," Uomini said. "If you're left-handed, you have a surprise advantage because most people are used to fighting against right-handers."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
My youngest brother seemed to be leaning to be left-handed as an infant, then broke his left collar bone as a toddler (from a fall, I SWEAR). I think he had to wear a sling for a couple months, but truly don’t remember the details. He ended up being right-handed.
Paul McCartney is a lefty. Made the Beatles look very symmetrical up there!
Definitely would make one very, very attentive.
Princess Bride — the swordfight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDlZ_SXx5gA
And I know that I am in the same sort of company as these ladies, lol (Martina McBride and Katie Pavlich).
I have mirror image identical twins. Even their teeth came in opposite. Still wonder how that happens.
I’m totally serious, it’s a real thing! Hopefully I am not the only one who has noticed this inconvenience? lol
Ferniehirst Castle, Clan Kerr.
:^) Yeah, that’s pretty cool, pretty rare too.
Same with me - eat and write left, right for just about everything else except racket sports like tennis or squash, but am not ambidextrous. If someone asks me if I'm right- or left-handed, I just say "yes". ;-)
Being ambidextrous amazes me. RH here and nearly helpless with left in anything that requires fine-tuning.
Yet when you design tools to be ambidextrous — think about the Colt CAR-4 rifle — you see an unusually high number of left-handed shots among soldiers & Marines. Didn’t used to be the case in earlier wars when bolt action rifles prevailed. I notice this constantly in photographs from Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom & Afghanistan. So there is a training component to this?
If tools & training are flexible enough to allow an individual to try it either way, suddenly the percentage of lefties for that activity goes way up.
Look at all the left-handed shots in Ice Hockey.
Counsins in maternal side are left handed and one in paternal side. Both my husbands siblings are left handed. It’s a pain at the dinner table. At thanksgiving we have to find corners for them if the sit next to righted handed peiple.
Y’know, now that I think about it, the last few loaves of bread I bought were left-handed...
LOL, my husband said I should qualify as handicapped since I’m a left-handed, redheaded female. :-) Sometimes it truly is a handicap.
I have met people that were left handed or right handed and couldn’t use the off hand for much of anything. I think that would difficult. I’m glad I’m like I am but it does cause the occasional brain confusion.
I’m a righty, but when I got my first computer in 1996, I purposefully trained myself to use my left hand on the mouse, which gave me easier access to the enter and arrow keys. Drives my kids crazy!
I could have written your post (except I have no confusion when someone tells me to turn left or right) . I write, eat and shave left-handed. Most other things I do right-handed. I think they call people like us “multidextrous”.
At our family dinners at the grandparents’ place back in the 1970s and ‘80s, me and my eldest cousin (she was the first born of our generation and I was the first male child of our generation) would be seated next to each other because of both being left handed.
But I also figured it would lessen the possibility of developing carpel tunnel syndrome.
So my mother began making me spend time with my left arm tied in front of my stomach.
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