Baboons communicate with their right hand
Behavioural Brain ResearchPublished 19 April 2006
Adrien Meguerditchian, Jacques Vauclair
Citations94
SJR quartileQ2
SJR score0.92
SNIP0.77
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TL;DR
The first evidence of strong population-level right-handedness in 60 captive baboons for a species-specific communicative manual gesture is reported, supporting the view that lateralization for language may have evolved from a gestural system of communication controlled by the left hemisphere.
Abstract
Humans are mainly right-handed for many actions including gestures. This bias is strongly linked to a left cerebral hemispheric dominance for language functions. Whether similar lateralized systems for communicative behaviors are present in other animals is unclear. Here we report the first evidence of strong population-level right-handedness in 60 captive baboons for a species-specific communicative manual gesture. Our findings support the view that lateralization for language may have evolved from a gestural system of communication controlled by the left hemisphere.
Keywords
PsychologyNeuroscience
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