handedness

6 Stories

Kissing the 'Right' Way: Most of Us Don't Go Left
Kissing the 'Right' Way:
Most of Us Don't Go Left
NEW STUDY
Jul 19, 2017 11:00 AM CDT

Kissing the 'Right' Way: Most of Us Don't Go Left

New research suggests this tendency might be innate

(Newser) - Dig if you will the picture: two people engaged in a kiss. Prince sang about "curious poses," but new research suggests that most of us may strike similar poses, leaning to the right instead of the left when kissing the lips of our partners. Researchers at the University...

Meet the World's Oldest Known Righty
Meet the World's
Oldest Known Righty
Oct 25, 2016 12:12 PM CDT

Meet the World's Oldest Known Righty

Telltale scratches on teeth go back nearly 2M years

(Newser) - A lot has changed over 1.8 million years, but perhaps not the tendency of hominids to favor their right hand. An upper jawbone belonging to a human relative who lived in what is now Tanzania almost 2 million years ago has been discovered with scratches on its still-intact teeth,...

It Turns Out Kangaroos Are Lefties

Red and eastern gray kangaroos are all left-handed, researchers find

(Newser) - Handedness (the preference for using one hand over the other for nearly all tasks) likely emerged in humans soon after we began to walk upright. And for years scientists have thought this trait belongs almost exclusively to bipedal primates, given it's never before been observed in quadruped creatures. Now...

When Exploring, Ants March to the Left, to the Left

Scientists are exploring this 'behavioral lateralization'

(Newser) - Roughly nine in 10 humans are right-handed, an example of "brain lateralization" that's pretty common among vertebrates—and now apparently invertebrates. Researchers in the UK are finding that even ants—which are invertebrates, meaning they have exoskeletons—carry an innate directional bias, in their case almost always turning...

Bad News for Lefties: You Have More Health Risks

Left-handed people more likely to develop neural disorders

(Newser) - About 10% of the population is left-handed, but a disproportionate amount of people with schizophrenia—20%—are lefties. Schizophrenia is just one of a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders that are more common in left-handed people, including dyslexia, ADHD, language difficulties, and mood disorders. Researchers think this could have...

Octopus Has How Many Legs? Guess Again

New research shows denizens of the deep show specialization, and handedness

(Newser) - Octopuses may not be eight-legged creatures after all, new research suggests. They do indeed have eight limbs, but some function more like arms, AFP reports. It breaks down like this: the front two are the most nimble and armlike, and are used for exploration; the back two are used mostly...

6 Stories