Across human cultures, about 10% of people prefer the left hand. Scientists have sought reasons for this low proportion. Researchers from the University of Oxford tested major hypotheses for handedness using data from 2,025 individuals across 41 monkey and ape species. They evaluated factors including tool use, diet, habitat, body mass, social organization, brain size, and locomotion. Humans initially appeared unusual compared with other primates, but the anomaly disappeared when models included upright walking and larger brain size. Accounting for these traits aligned human handedness with broader primate patterns, suggesting these features are key drivers of handedness evolution.
"Across every human culture, only about 10 per cent of people favour their left hand. However, despite decades of research, scientists have remained clueless as to why this is the case. Now, experts from the University of Oxford believe they've solved the mystery. According to their research, the answer comes down to two defining features in human evolution - walking on two legs, and the dramatic expansion of the human brain."
"To get to the bottom of it, the researchers analysed data on 2,025 individuals across 41 species of monkeys and apes. Using models that account for evolutionary relationships between species, the team tested several hypotheses for why handedness evolved. This included tool use, diet, habitat, body mass, social organisation, brain size, and locomotion. Their analysis revealed that humans sat 'conspicuously outside the pattern' that explained every other primate."
"However, when the researchers added brain size and the relative length of our arms versus legs into the model, that exceptional status disappeared. 'In other words, once you account for upright walking and a large brain, humans stop looking like an evolutionary anomaly,' the researchers explained. Using the same model, the researchers were also able to estimate the likely handednes"
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