by Michael
(London, UK)
My lady cat companion. She is left handed
Hi everyone, I always thought that my lady cat was left handed and the experts have just confirmed that most pets are left or right handed. However, female cats and dogs are usually right handed.
Some pets are ambidextrous but when the pet favours one paw over the other they do things more efficiently. It allows them to react faster. This might be because there is more certainty over which paw to use - less choice which speeds up decision making.
Even fish are left and right eyed.
Knowing my lady cat as I do over these past 17 years or so it is not that difficult to see that she favours her left paw. It is not clear cut but when I play with her, for instance, she tends to use her left to grab the cat tease.
She uses her right and left paw to knock on the cat flap to ask me to let her in so she is not completely left handed as we know it:
But over all I have seen a definite favouring of the left side.
Favouring one side is called, "lateralisation". Parrots who are positively one sided pulled up food faster that ambidextrous birds when it dangled from a string.
It was originally thought that an animal's capacity to use language resulted in left or right handedness because language depends mainly on the brain's left hemisphere. That seems to have been overturned unless we are mistaken about the language used by our fellow creatures. Perhaps they use language far better than we imagine. We are still learning.
Do you see left or right handedness in your cat?
Reference:
Times Newspaper May 2nd 2010
