Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 102, Issue 35, Pages 12634-12638Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0505806102
Keywords
hemisphere specialization; laterality; primates
Categories
Funding
- NINDS NIH HHS [R01 NS036605, NS-36605, NS-42867, R01 NS042867] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Whether nonhuman primates exhibit population-level handedness remains a topic of considerable theoretical and empirical debate. One continued subject of discussion is whether evidence of population-level handedness in primates is confined to studies in captive animals or whether it is in both captive and wild subjects. Here, we report evidence of population-level handedness in wild chimpanzees for a tool-use task known as termite-fishing. We subsequently compared the handedness for termite-fishing with other published reports on handedness for nut-cracking and wadge-dipping and found task-specific differences in handedness. Last, when combing all of the published data on tool use in wild chimpanzees, we show that hand preferences are heritable. Contrary to previous claims, our results demonstrate that population-level handedness is evident in wild chimpanzees and suggest that the antecedents of lateralization of function associated with hand use were present at least 5 million years ago, before the Pan-Homo split.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available