Left-handed pets give paws for thought

SCIENTISTS have discovered that most pets — including cats, dogs, parrots and even fish — are right or left-”handed”. They prefer using one paw, foot or eye over the other.

Researchers previously assumed that the trait of being left or right-handed — known as lateralisation — was confined to humans, and that animals were ambidextrous. They have now found that nearly every creature has evolved to specialise in using one side over the other.
In cats, scientists have concluded that females tend to favour their right paw when trying to extract a treat from a jar, while toms favour their left. The same gender divide applies in dogs.
Fish tend to have a dominant eye when looking at potential predators. Right-eyed fish circle threats clockwise and left-eyed fish move anti-clockwise.

Lateralisation seems to help animals to react faster, increasing their chances of survival. Researchers at Macquarie University in Sydney found last year that fully left or right-footed parrots were faster than ambidextrous birds at pulling up food dangling from a string.
Wild chimpanzees that are fully left or right-handed have been found to be more efficient at “fishing” for termites using a stick.

The research overturns previous assumptions that handedness was a by-product of the capacity for language, which depends predominantly on the left hemisphere of the brain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7114084.ece