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There’s a good book by Chris McManus called Right Hand, Left Hand which discusses handedness primarily in humans but also apes and other species too.
He won an Ignoble prize about 20 years ago for a paper on testicular asymmetry in Italian Renaissance statuory. I think the thesis was that as most guy's right hangs lower, but statues' lefts do, sculptors we're working from life. Or I may have that as with so many things the wrong way round.
(I write with my left, do most other things right handed, and mix up left and right. )
There's a tree snake in Asia that evolved to have more teeth on the right side of its jaw, to better kill and eat snails - asymmetric dentition.
From the way it attacks the snail, the right jaw and right handed snail spiral is a match, right jaw and left handed snail would be a mismatch. As right handed spirals are far more common with the snail, as for the UK example, the toothier jaw has evolved on the right.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1133
There's videos in the paper that show the snake/snail chirality interface.
Examples of evolution are everywhere I guess, but this is an unusual example where it is clearly driven by macroscopic three dimensional shape.
I'm left handed but play golf and cricket right handed - I can't say it was anything to do with the clubs that were available, it's just what felt right.
I believe the most famous left handed golfer Phil Mickelson is actually right handed.
mrb123
I’m left handed but play golf and cricket right handed – I can’t say it was anything to do with the clubs that were available, it’s just what felt right.
I'm the same, I think. Left-handed for writing, but everything else is just done by whether it feels 'correct' or not.
Most tools; Scissors, nail clippers, pliers, screwdrivers etc. - right hand, even those where the ergonomics of the device mean they are ambidextrous. My daughter is left-handed & uses left-handed scissors - I struggle to use them, but perhaps more to do with 40+ years of using right handed ones?
Racket sports - left handed
Golf - right handed
Football - right footed
Weird, innit? So why is it more natural for me to write with my left-hand and do other precision things with my left-hand, such as painting an Airfix model - but do most other things right handed?!
I can relatively easily right with both hands at the same time forming the mirror image of the same sentence - so left-hand goes from right to left, writing backwards from the centre of an open book, while right hand goes left to right, writing normally from the centre of an open book. Obviously the right hand writing is pretty messy. Not sure if this is something everyone can do, or some weird leftie brain-fart.
Weird, innit?
I don't think it is necessarily, I think most folks aren't totally right or left dominant, most people can use their left hands for things if they're "right-handed" and vice versa. I think of myself as right-handed, I hold and cut food using a knife in my left hand and wear my watch on my right wrist. I think most folks have the occasional oddity, that they're probably not even really aware of until they think about it.
I can relatively easily right with both hands at the same time forming the mirror image of the same sentence
Can you do it equally well independently rather than simultaneously?
hold and cut food using a knife in my left hand
I've always held that place settings are arse-backwards. In isolation you'd use a spoon/fork with your right hand, but if you need to use a table knife then you'd switch hands and eat with your left? That's Bizarro World. If I tried to eat using my right hand I'd have my eye out.
I’ve always held that place settings are arse-backwards.
Yes! I'm right-handed but eat with my fork in my right hand and knife in left.
Makes perfect sense to me. Fork does all the twisty complicated stuff, and has to aim into my mouthhole. Knife just goes back and forth cutting, or pushing stuff onto the fork.
My wife thinks I'm weird. I mean, she has a point, but not for this reason 😁
Weird, innit?
Not really, perfectly normal for a left hander, right handed for two handed grip where the top hand (LH) is important, left handed where only using one hand.
South-paw here as well. Although like others I've got used to right handed scissors and can't even use left handed ones. Back in the day when I was a landscape gardener I was always complaining to the boss he got right handed tools - then one day he presented me with some left handed secateurs, which I promptly handed back saying 'I use my right hand for cutting, these are no good'
We're definately weirdos (or I am anyway)
Yes! I’m right-handed but eat with my fork in my right hand and knife in left.
Think about what you are doing though. The fork is in your control hand. The hand you find best to manipulate say a pen when writing. With cutlery the sawing action isnt control really it's almost an automatic, it's the hand holding the piece of food still.
I'm totally left handed except I can only use a mouse and an iron in my right hand. Go figure!
TheGingerOne
Full Member
I’m totally left handed except I can only use a mouse and an iron in my right hand. Go figure!
Ditto. Do you throw with your right hand like I do?
Snails born aross the equator spiral the other way.
Some of them don’t…
My old man is left handed, but plays golf (quite well) with right handed clubs because that was all he had to learn with.
Same here with archery. And exactly why I could never learn golf, I just couldn’t do it.
I’m right-handed, but I’m left-eye dominant so when my dad took me to the TA rifle range to shoot .22 rifles, I struggled because the action was on the wrong side making it almost impossible to hold it properly and shoot.
Similar to archery, although there I had access to left-handed bows when I started a beginner’s course. Oddly enough, certain components, like sights, can’t be obtained in left-hand versions. I wanted a particular carbon-fibre sight, but the Korean company doesn’t make left-handed versions, because apparently in Korea, or South Korea at any rate, teachers will only teach students to shoot right-handed, so deal with it!
I just bought a similar priced alloy one… 🤷🏼