Animal Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento , Rovereto, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2015 Mar 6;6:233. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00233. eCollection 2015.
Functional preferences in the use of right/left forelimbs are not exclusively present in humans but have been widely documented in a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species. A matter of debate is whether non-human species exhibit a degree and consistency of functional forelimb asymmetries comparable to human handedness. The comparison is made difficult by the variability in hand use in humans and the few comparable studies conducted on other species. In spite of this, interesting continuities appear in functions such as feeding, object manipulation and communicative gestures. Studies on invertebrates show how widespread forelimb preferences are among animals, and the importance of experience for the development of forelimb asymmetries. Vertebrate species have been extensively investigated to clarify the origins of forelimb functional asymmetries: comparative evidence shows that selective pressures for different functions have likely driven the evolution of human handedness. Evidence of a complex genetic architecture of human handedness is in line with the idea of multiple evolutionary origins of this trait.
使用右/左前肢的功能偏好不仅存在于人类中，而且在各种脊椎动物和无脊椎动物中都有广泛的记载。有争议的问题是，非人类物种是否表现出与人类惯用手相当的功能前肢不对称程度和一致性。由于人类手的使用方式存在差异，以及对其他物种进行的可比研究较少，因此比较变得困难。尽管如此，在喂食、物体操作和交际手势等功能方面，仍然存在有趣的连续性。无脊椎动物的研究表明，前肢偏好在动物中是多么普遍，以及经验对前肢不对称发展的重要性。为了阐明前肢功能不对称的起源，对脊椎动物物种进行了广泛的研究：比较证据表明，不同功能的选择压力可能推动了人类惯用手的进化。人类惯用手具有复杂的遗传结构的证据符合这种特征具有多种进化起源的观点。
