what is the benefit of having a dominant hand/leg as compared to having equally skilled limbs?
In: Biology
As a lefty who was pushed to stop being a lefty I can’t do any sports. When we were hunter gatherers a left on one side and a right on the other would kill the prey faster.
Looks like this video will help explain it to you pretty well ^^
My sister i oaw is ambidextrous. She says that she really doesn’t think much about it. If the pen is closer to her left, she wrotes with the left, and vice versa.
She decides which hand/leg to use, based on convenience.
A quote from her: “I’m equally clumsy with both.”
The main benefit would be not having to take the time to decide which side to use. If both sides were equally dominant, time would be wasted, and that could result in death.
I’m ambidextrous and I never think about which hand I use. For examle, when I assist surgeries, I chose whichever is more convenient for the head surgeon. It doesn’t matter in the slightest which instrument I hold in which hand.
It also doesn’t matter the slightest bit which hand I use for shooting a bow, for example.
But since we had to choose one hand to learn to write with at school (I chose right because most people were right-handed and I wanted to fit in), I write faster with my right hand. It’s equally readable, though left may be a little more beautiful because I write slower with left. But at the end of the day, my right hand writes mich more efficiently because it’s faster.
So I guess when you learn a new skill it matters what hand you use to learn this skill, especially when it comes to how fast you can perform this skill. And I think evolutionary speaking/in nature, speed is incredibly important, for example in hunting.
Theoretically speaking it should take more time to learn a new skill with both hands, but I’ve personally never experienced this (that I know of).
generally both hands are good at different things, its not that one hand is just plain better. usually you need both hands to do a task well.
I trained myself to use a computer mouse (for work) on both sides and it instantly transfered to most other skills. For instance I’m equally proficient at shooting a rifle on both sides now. I can write almost as good and as quickly with my non-dominant side. The only thing I can’t do as well is throw a ball. It wasn’t thousands of hours to train either, a couple of hundred at the most.
I’m cross dominant so i can only do certain things with one side and i do certain things with the other side. I don’t see too much of a disadvantage 🤷♀️ only in learning a new skill… because i have to figure out which hand i do it with
It takes an immense amount of resources to be able to throw, write, etc…. with a hand. That kind of dexterity is massively difficult to produce. The return for being able to do it with both sides is far too low for it to be worthwhile in evolutionary terms.
We dont have a skilled hand and an unskilled hand
We have (as species, obviously) two *very* skilled hands, that happens to specialize in different things, eventually gaining a LOT of skill for most the things we do daily in one hand
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