No Stupid Questions

I actually just listened to a podcast about this!

Even plants have a dominate side! It’s usually the right side and there are reasons for that. I won’t try to explain it here. I’m not good at that kind of thing but I’ll link to the podcast below. It’s less than 30 minutes too!

Why are there lefties and righties? - Unexplainable 26m

Molecular Genetic Analysis of Left-Handedness in Plants by Takashi Hasimoto

Also, I have two male dogs. I noticed that one always lifts his left leg to pee and the other lifts his right.

I guess this also brings up eye dominance.

Mice are known to display paw preference. Primates are generally preferentially handed. I’d think many mammalian species are as well, given these observations.

There is actually some research on this and yes cats and dogs often have a preference for which side they favor. The distribution is far more even than it is with humans and many more are ambilateral and work well with either side without showing a strong preference.

More interesting than cats and dogs are chickens and pigs. Most chickens don't have a strong preference but those that do have a dominant eye tend to react to visual stimuli faster than other chickens. Pigs often have a dominant side of their about and it often corresponds with the direction their tails spiral.

Here’s some anecdotal data. I am on a Flyball team with my 3 year old cattle dog mix (really fun relay dog sport!) and when starting to train we test which way the dogs will turn after getting the ball. Most of our team dogs will turn to the right, but we have a few that turn to the left. We call them righties and lefties! For us it’s all good so long as they can do a safe turn on the box.

Here is a study that suggests they do.

Tl;dr: Around 3 out of 4 cats show a preference to a specific paw. Additionally, they found that female cats are more likely to prefer their right paw than male cats do.

Around 2 in 3 dogs seem to prefer a specific paw. Dogs' sex does not seem to influence laterality.

My dog is a leftie, for sure. Anytime he touches his face, raises a paw to ask for pets, or pees, he favors using his left paw.

Bipedalism is what drives "handedness"

Kangaroos are infamously left handed, and that may have to do with why they never developed language. That's really the only thing stopping Tank Girl from becoming reality.

However so far no one has been approved for a grant to breed right handed kangaroos to see if they really do sound like Ice T.

But while a quadruped may favor one side or the other, it's not the same.

I don't know about front paws, but dogs definitely have less control over their hind legs. During agility training, my dog can easily lift one front paw at a time to jump over something, but she'll never lift one hind leg at a time. She can do it, but not smoothly while running. I guess it's similar with the way we can't seperately control our pinky finger very well. If you move it, the ring finger wants to move as well.

I noticed this last night with my cat.

I taught him a few years ago to reach out with his paw to ask for pets and he always seems to use his right paw even though I taught him on both paws. He reaches out his right paw and taps my hand or me elsewhere and brings my hand to his chin to get some pets.

Just noticed it is almost always the right but sometimes he will use the left, but he seems to prefer the right.

Edit: added a word to make this more clear

If you ask my dog to give paw, he'll give his right by default unless you say / indicate otherwise. When my cat eats his food, he picks it up in his left paw. So, maybe?

They probably do.

I think there was a study that found polar bears do.