Various studies have shown that around 90 per cent of humans are right-handed, while more males than females are left-handed. An international study published recently in the journal Royal Society Open Science adapted a test used for measuring hand dominance in humans to find out if dogs were similarly right- or left-pawed. In order to maintain as close a similarity as possible to human tests, the 47 dogs involved in the study were all sexually intact. All the animals were between one and 10 years old, and included 22 females and 25 males of both mixed breed and pure-bred dogs. The study involved the dogs performing a number of task-related tests to assess a dominant paw-preference, and if gender played a part in it.
Each dog underwent individual testing in three different environments: their home setting, an outdoor area and an isolated room in Italy’s University of Bari’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. As the canines performed tasks such as reaching for food, and walking down stairs in various settings, researchers found that paw preference differed depending on the task, and on each animal’s gender.
Results showed that one in five dogs were fully ambidextrous, one in three were strongly right- or left-pawed, and the rest weakly favoured one side over the other. More male dogs appeared to favour their left paws more often.
With the development of the ‘Doginburgh Inventory’ – an adaptation of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory that assesses handedness in humans – integrating multiple tasks into one measure enabled the researchers to assess not only which paw a dog preferred, but also how strong that preference was, offering insights into canine brain functioning.
Anne Layton-Bennett
