Parrots are Left-Handed
Just like humans, parrots favour one side of the body than the other. Lefties worldwide can rejoice, as they are joined by parrots as being more left handed – or rather, more left footed than anything else. It is also known that some species do try both sides before deciding whether they want to be a rightie or a leftie.
Parrots are generally 'left-handed'
Researchers in Australia have found that virtually all of the parrots that they have studied prefer to use their left eye and foot, rather than their right eye and foot.
“Basically, you get this very close relationship with the eye that they use to view the object and then the hand that they use to grasp it, and it’s very consistent across all the species except a couple,” said Calum Brown, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, who led the study.
Brown said that some species are so strongly right or lef-handed, that there’s no variation at all. The study published in Biological Letters, said that Brown and his colleagues studeied about 320 parrots from 16 different Australian parrot species in order to find out what eye they used to view potential food.
In their study, they found that 47% of parrots were left-handed, 33% were right handed, and the rest were ambidextrous. Some of the younger birds also appeared to experiment with both sides before they settled on one side.
It was found that every Sulphur-crested cockatoo studied was left-handed. Howevre, juveniles after being fledged are experimenting with both hands all the time. They eventually settle on their left-hand.
In human-terms, the idea of ‘handedness’ is tied to tendency to use one brain hemisphere over another. This is also known as lateralization. In terms of the parrots, this is an advantage regardless of what their dominant side is.
“It’s quite obvious that in terms of direct foraging, as well as more complicated problem-solving situations, that if you’re very strongly lateralized, irrespective of whether you’re right or left handed, you tend to be better at this sort of task,” Brown said.
Brown also said that lateralisation allowed for efficiency, sort of like how a computer with 2 processors can do two things at once and multi-task well. This is what they believe is happening with the birds.
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This may be the study which shows that parrots are proportionately left-footed to right-people–ie. about 90% of people are right-handed and therefore left-brain-hemisphere dominant; for parrots they say that 90% of them are left-footed and they are the only animal that has this heavy distribution of “left-footed=right-brained dominant”
THEY ARE WRONG! I’ll give benefit of doubt to them, but not much.
Most so called left-footed parrots step with their right foot first; left-brain-dominant/right-handed people prefer to stand on their right foot when standing on one leg, and will lead with their right foot when stepping (especially when stepping to a risky position) but they will reach to grab something with their left-foot.
The reason is because a left-brain-dominant person AND PARROT will feel more secure standing on their right leg since awareness and agility is far better adapted and developed there for them.
As for the eyes, birds eyes are more coordinated separately from each other than humans. The bird will focus on an object with whichever foot they are grabbing with, and will usually turn their head a little to do so. Humans will focus with their dominate eye, except when it cannot see what the other hand is doing, or when shooting guns with both hands, to aim a gun properly with the left hand the shooter has to use their left eye or cross-over in an unstable position; the same with bows.
Also, the left-eye of a human is far more involved in left-hand actions than it is in right hand actions; furthermore, ambidextrous people use whichever eye goes with that side of the body and they can use both at the same time.
That’s right folks, left reaching parrots are actually right-footed and left-brain dominant, and active brain scans will show this (IF anyone throws the money at it to find out). The study is faulty due to them assuming they were dealing with arms instead of legs–very faulty. Both parrots and humans, and most other animals all the way to bacteria are about 90/10 left-brain/right-brain (there are exceptions in some bacteria and plants, but perhaps that too is due to a misunderstanding of anatomy).
Try it.