Here’s a fun experiment to try. If you have a cat or a dog, place a treat in a thin, empty container and see which paw they use to retrieve it. If the science is correct, most males will favour their left paw, while most females will favour their right. Many animals are ambilateral (the non-human equivalent of being ambidextrous), and sometimes there’s a sex bias to these preferences.
Other times, differences exist at the species level. Around 85–90 per cent of us humans favour our right hands, and we’re not alone. Among primates, most chimps, gorillas, baboons and ring-tailed lemurs also prefer to use their right hands, but Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkeys, de Brazza’s monkeys and orangutans tend to use their left.
This plays to the idea that handedness is linked to lifestyle. Among those listed, the right-handers are predominantly ground dwellers, while the left-handers like to hang out in trees.
According to the postural origin theory of handedness, early primates lived in trees and used their dominant left hand to grab food and branches, while holding the tree with their right.