What's in your Hand?
Ever wondered why you're good at maths while your best friend has more of creative mind? Rachael Bletchly tells you how your hand can hold all the answers.
Oxford University researchers have discovered that crows can be right or left beaked – just like humans can be right or left handed.
A report published in the journal Current Biology reveals the birds show a preference for which side they hold sticks when using them to poke larvae out of holes.
Scientists believe the left or right bias is connected to their vision – and the clever crows try to keep the tip of the stick in view of their strongest eye.
Humans have been arguing about left and right for centuries. In medieval times lefties were thought to be in league with the devil and considered less intelligent than right-handers.
Then modern research discovered the wiring of our brains controls which hand we favour – and that left handers may be more artistic, are better tennis players and grow up quicker than right handers.
Here’s how lefties and righties compare...
Just 12 per cent of the world’s population are left handed – and twice as many men as women. 30 per cent of us are mixed-handed and switch hands during some tasks. Ambidextrous people can do any task equally well with either hand, but it’s exceptionally rare. Ambilevous or ambisinister are awkward with both hands.
Our brains are cross-wired meaning the left hemisphere controls the right handed side of the body and vice-versa. So left handers can boast they are always in their right mind.
The left hemisphere also controls speech, language, writing, logic, maths and science while the right side controls controls music, art, creativity, perception, emotions, and genius. So left-handers are more likely to be creative and visual thinkers, better at 3D perception...which is why there are more left-handed architects than righties.
Right handed people will earn 12 per cent more over their lifetimes than lefties. A study of 47,000 people in the UK and US suggest left-handers are at a significant disadvantage in the workplace. Harvard economist Joshua Goodman claimed “lefties have more emotional and behavioural problems, have more learning disabilities such as dyslexia, complete less schooling, and work in occupations requiring less cognitive skill.”
During the Middle Ages, left-handed folk were thought to be possessed by the Devil – prompting the modern definition of the word sinister which comes from sinistra, the Latin word for left.
The English word left comes from the Old English lyft, meaning idle, weak, or useless. The French word for left, gauche, also means clumsy or awkward.
Christianity is strongly based towards the right hand. It is the right had that gives the blessing and makes the sign of the cross. The bible contains more than 100 favourable references to the right-hand and 25 unfavourable references to the left-hand.
Stone Age implements discovered seem equally divided between left and right and studies of cave drawings have indicated a preference for the left hand.
Nails grow faster on your dominant hand.
If both parents of a child are left-handed, there is a 26% chance of that child being left-handed. In 2006 a study of twins from 25,732 families suggest just 24 per cent had inherited it. Researchers recently located a gene they think controls handedness.
Research in 2001 suggested lefties tend to die three years younger than righties although extremely left-handed people have a life expectancy that is just one year lower.
Left-handers get all sorts of strange – and often unpleasant – nicknames. Researchers found 88 different words in English dialects including: gar-pawed, cack-handed, gibble-fisted, scoochy, kay-neived, corrie-fisted, cuddy-wifted and kittaghy.
In Australia they are “mollydookers”, in Italian it’s “mancino” meaning crooked and in the US they are “southpaws” - a term derived from baseball. Parks were often built with the homeplate in the western corner of the field. When a left-handed pitcher was facing the batsman, his throwing arm would be the closest to the south, hence ‘Southpaw’ was coined.
The Meru people of Kenya believed that the left-hand of their holy man possessed such evil power that he had to keep it hidden for the safety of others.
Four of the five original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed as were one in four Apollo astronauts including Neil Armstrong.
Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci were both left-handed. Other famous lefties include Jack The Ripper, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, the Queen Mother Prince William, Winston Churchill, Tom Cruise, Morgan Freema, Judy Garland, Chewbacca the Wookie, Bob Geldof, Jimi Hendrix and Sir Paul McCartney.
Left handers are more likely to have allergies, migraines and insomnia and are three times more likely to become alcoholics as the right side of the brain - which is dominant in left handers - has a lower tolerance to alcohol!
Right handed people reach puberty four to five months earlier than lefties.
Left handers make especially good baseball players, tennis players, swimmers, boxers and fencers. Almost 40% of the top tennis players are lefties, including Rafael Nadal who has won 14 grand slam titles.
August 13th has been declared International Left Handers Day.
Five of the seven most recent U.S Presidents have been left handed – Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and current leader Barack Obama.
On a QWERTY keyboard there are 1447 English words typed solely with the left hand, whilst only 187 are typed with the right hand.
The official Boy Scout handshake uses the left hand, not the right. Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts was ambidextrous but he chose the left hand because it is closer to the heart.
