Posted on 08/21/2005 11:11:17 AM PDT by atomic conspiracy
Study Suggests Most Chimps are Lefties By Randolph E. Schmid Associated Press posted: 15 August 2005 07:09 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When it comes to fishing tasty termites out of their mounds, wild chimpanzees don't have the right stuff. Most, in fact, are southpaws. A three-year study of 17 wild chimps in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, found that 12 of them used their left hands when using sticks to probe for termites.
Four were right-handed and one was listed as ambiguously handed.
"Contrary to previous claims, wild chimpanzees show population-level handedness in tool-use,'' reported the research team led by William D. Hopkins of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta. Population-level handedness indicates a preference for one hand in a large group.
Hopkins' findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The paper also looked at previous studies of chimpanzees and found that others had noted a left-handed preference when using sticks to fish for termites, but there had been reports of a right-handed preference when cracking nuts.
Scientists have long debated whether nonhuman primates exhibit handedness.
Because the hands are controlled by opposite sides of the brain, the finding could indicate that this brain division had begun as long as 5 million years ago, prior to the split between humans and chimpanzees.
Richard W. Byrne of the University of St. Andrews in Fife, United Kingdom, who has reported on hand-preference in mountain gorillas doing complex tasks, said: "It now looks as if whatever gives a population skew to manually skilled behavior has its roots deep in the shared ancestry of humans and all other African great apes.''
Byrne, who was not part of Hopkins' research team, said the findings show that with a big sample of chimpanzees there is a slight but real group hand-preference when chimpanzees fish for termites, although many previous researchers with smaller samples had concluded there was not.
Among humans, a right-handed preference has been estimated for about 90 percent of the population. But Byrne noted that the figure "depends on asking people which hand they write with, and in studies of nonliterate people's behavior, much lower figures (for right-handedness) are found.''
A larger question concerns the evolution of language, Hopkins said in a telephone interview.
Most people, right and left handed, use the left hemisphere of the brain to process language, he explained.
The argument has been made that if humans developed language after the split from apes, and language is related to handedness, then there shouldn't be handedness in apes, he said,
"This reinforces the view that the whole historical link between language and handedness is probably not a correct one and people need to rethink those ideas,'' Hopkins said.
Explains some of our presidents.
Explains A LOT!
Hmmm. The "creative" side of their brains. No wonder they are so fond of throwing their own excrement around - it's natural evidence of the foundation of modern art.
Hahaha my boss is a lefty and she's real big about it. Can't wait to drop this off on her desk!
They're probably racists, too.
I mean, all the black people in Africa and who does Cheetah pick to hang out with?
Forgive me but this is almost worth signing up to DU just to be able to post this article. Since Chimperor is their favorite name for W this is almost too hard to resist.
Hand writing analysis?
So, I guess it follows that most "lefties" are chimps, right? All the leftist I've ever talked with show about the same level of intelligence as a chimp.
This has got to be of interest to major league baseball scouts, hungry for southpaw pitchers.
My daughter is also left-handed, the only one on both sides of my husband and mine's family.
She is a identical, mirror-image twin. Her twin is right-handed, and she is left-handed.
I don't know how all the handedness is figured out, but I think it is very fascinating.
I really think it is fascinating when it comes to the twin issue.
Try this. It works most of the time and sometimes when it doesn't work, the person has changed hands over their lifetime and may or may not know it. Sometimes it just doesn't work.
Know how you fold your arms in front of you? The fingers of one hand tucks under one arm and those of the other hand lay on top of a bicep. Usually you can tell which hand is dominant by choosing the hand with fingers on top.
Please try it with your twins and tell me what happens. It'd be great if it worked with them!
I don't think this is so, cuz over at DU they keep talkin' bout chimp and his right wing....
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