Are lefties better at sports?

Roughly 10 percent of the human population is left-handed. This minority lives in a right-handed world, and many tools are made for right-handed people. But do left-handed people have any advantages over the righties? Tune in and find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice and I don't know at the science
editor how stuff worst dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer at how stuff works dot com. Today we're

(00:23):
discussing one of my favorite articles I think on how
stuff works dot com and this is one that you wrote. Yeah, yeah,
it's pretty good back in the day and the title
is actually our lefties better at sports And as you
allude to in your intro of said article, um, you know,
lefties tend to think they're superior. And in fact, you
were saying that right before we started recording. Yeah, yeah,

(00:44):
I was. I think I was criticizing you because you are,
in fact a lefty. I am a lefty and you
are not. Yeah, Matt, now, my, did you ever want
to be a lefty? No? Because I mean it's you know,
you're always bumping into things. I mean, you've got to
have a special desk and just kind of like a pain.
Um my sister was lefty and my my wife is lefty.

(01:04):
Really yeah, but it's always kind of award because it's
like we have to watch how we sit next to
each other at things. Otherwise, you know, if we're at
dinner table next to each other, we might be bumping
elbows and and it's annoying. And then you know, with
left handed people, whether there's one in the family or
you marry one, there's the whole you know, thing about
them being evil and and I'm always yeah, I'm always

(01:24):
just hesitant when I mean just around left hand lefties,
because because that explains so much about our working relationship. Yeah,
so left handedness or right handed this is just something
that we inherit um. In fact, lefties and righties have
been around as far back as the Paleolithic period. And
in your article you stated that the number of left
handers um it's roughly ten percent of the population, and

(01:45):
that number has remained steady for about ten thou years,
which is pretty pretty incredible. Yeah, so the those cave
meant those unique lefty cave men back in the day.
But it probably wasn't too hard on those guys because
they didn't have desks, you know, and they probably weren't
eating at a dinner able and they weren't having to
use as annoying left handed scissors. Yeah, what other products
are there that are specific to left handed because I

(02:06):
just use regular products since I'm right handed, so I
don't know what kind of special equipment you guys need
to fund. There are mugs with special labeling so that
we can read them, which is kind of mugs like Okay,
I have a mug on my desk right now, Like
why is that a right handed person's mug? Like if
it's left handed on I just turned around or something,
what you know, it's it's just where else can you
put the handle? Like is it on the inside? For

(02:27):
I don't know, I have a special lamp handed mug.
Like for instance, I'm looking at the pencil in my
hand right now, just in case I need to take
a note or two and I cannot read the writing. However,
if I hold it in my right hand, I can
read the writing, and that sort of a deal. I
don't really need to write to read the writing on
pencils all that often, but it's just one of those
things that we left use have adapted to deal with.
You should the next time, like you're a I don't

(02:48):
know you, you go to buy a car or whatever,
somebody gives you some sort of like the business pen
and they give you one that is for right hand
you should get like really offended throw it back at them. Yeah,
well they're they're a whole lefty movement. Um. And I'm
not talking about politics obviously, Um, but so nature nurture.
What's the deal here, Well, we're not really sure the

(03:09):
exact combination of genetic or environmental factors that contribute to, uh,
what makes us right handed or left handed. That is
important to note that you do see this throughout the
animal kingdom, right, definitely, definitely, you're talking about the c
snails in your in your left handed article and the crabs.
I mean, you see it. It's accepted if you don't

(03:30):
have hands. It's called what laterality, I believe. Yeah, so
just the preference to do different bodily operations, you know,
one way or another. So in the case of snails,
for example, Um, isn't it that their their shells coil counterclockwise? Right? Yeah,
that's right, and so that's what makes them a lefty snail.
Or even in the case of fish, where um, you know,

(03:50):
a lefty fish would probably start left as opposed to
a righty fish. And if um, you know, if there's
a predator chasing you, then you know, maybe that benefits
you because they're not going to expect the fish to
to dart left, so it's a surprise move. On the
other hand, you have all the other fish are are
darting right and you're just kind of out there hanging
out in the ocean, then maybe it doesn't benefit you.
But we're not quite there yet. Okay, we'll cut back

(04:13):
on that, not just the second. Yeah, so the question
of whether you're ready or a lefty something is settled
in the womb, which I think is kind of interesting.
And then you hear other people saying that handedness isn't
settled until as late as h five and humans, I
think that my son might be a lefty. Yeah, you
think so. I think so, And I'm kind of proud
of the little guy. Yeah, are you going to take

(04:35):
sides if if one's right handed one's left hand. No.
I will never be an evil parent and force him
to to write or you know, do anything else that
he doesn't want to with the right hand or left
hand or Yeah, you know, I'm not into that kind
of parenting, Robert. So there are some costs of being
lefty that which I find really interesting and which you
guys have probably heard about. There's the big one about

(04:56):
driving and accidents. Have you heard this that lefties are
more prone to It's like the fish thing, right, what
you said, Like the fish will dart one way when
the other started the other, except this is behind the
wheel of a moving automobile. So well, right, so I've
heard it explained as um, you know, if you're left handed,
you know that's your dominant hands, so if you imagine
them on the car wheel, you're more prone to turn
the car into oncoming traffic. That's one way I've heard

(05:20):
it explained. I have not seen any studies to back
that up, but now a smaller height is apparently another factor,
though smaller which like my wife is pretty tall for
a girl. I mean, so I don't know how much
I buy that one. Also in some of these guys,
and these are theorized costs of being lefty, and they

(05:41):
probably like pan out over large population, so you can't
just be like WHOA. That's also later onset of puberty
and they may not live as long, which is fine,
I mean, you don't care, you know, yeah, So I'll
so higher instance of schizophrenia, alcoholism, dyslexia, along stuff like

(06:04):
Crohn's disease and all sort of colitis. And then you
you have some mental disabilities that maybe um showing up
and lefties more. Yeah, so that thought about takes care
of it for some of the costs out there of
of being you know, lefty, using your left hand with
those funny green scissors. Yeah, well that's the thing that's
probably pretty traumatizing, the greens, the funny green scissors and
the funky desks, you know, Okay, I will tell you

(06:27):
that when you're learning sports, you know, maybe you're learning
how to shoot um, you know, you're learning archery, and
the instructor has never dealt with the lefties, so they
have to figure out how to show you with the
arms and they're right handed. It can, you know, sort
of get annoying after a while. I wonder, how about
playing guitar. I wonder if they have to use a
different hand. I would think so, And if they did,

(06:48):
it would make because you use your left hand to pick.
I would use my left hand to you know, strum
the guitar or whatever. It wouldn't you use your right hand? Well,
you know how like the older guitar dude always like
comes onto the lady in the movie by like showing
her how to play the guitar. I wonder if that's
a limiting factor if he's like a riding and he's
coming onto a lefty. Oh, good point. Definitely guitar players,

(07:09):
that's gone for you. So there is one good thing
about being lefty, and it's you know, whether you're smacking
a tennis ball cross court or you're landing a left hook,
or you're fighting someone in hand to hand combat as
the case, maybe you're gonna have that advantage of surprise. Right. Yeah,
this is this is my favorite area of the study
because it you know, I don't get to write about
like gladiator gladiatorial pits much, not nearly as much as

(07:32):
you want to. Well yeah, I mean I would probably
get bored with it if I was writing for the
history beat here because because lord no, it's just you know,
gladiator after gladiator article for those guys. But um, but no,
it's like it comes down to, like, all right, you're
in sing especially like a primitive environment or an older
culture where you know, before you had guns and all this,
and it was more of a situation where I need

(07:53):
to know how to use either my hands for combat
or some sort of like a sword or a club
or you know, machette, I'm a shetty or a tridulent
and a net uh that if you're in the glad
and gladiator pit. But but yeah, so it's it's yeah,
hand to hand combat with some sort of weapons often
so and and a lot of times this is this
is gonna be your like bread and butter like either

(08:13):
it's like you know, a part of like your culture
where there's a lot of fighting in it, or or
you're you're regularly going to war or you know, your
social status depends on it. So you're gonna train right
and if someone's gonna lead, if you you know, in fighting,
you're gonna lead with either your left you're right, if
you're right hand, you're gonna lead with the right right,
All right, if of the population is right handed, who

(08:35):
are you going to train to fight? Well, so this
brings up an interesting question. How are you gonna try
to fight? You're gonna train to fight the right handed people,
yes you are. But so you're a pro athlete, you know,
I'm sure like lefty Oscar de la Hoya is not,
or somebody who's fighting Lefty Oscar de la hoya is gonna,
you know, go into the ring with with a left
handed fighter. Yeah, exactly, They're going to train up but

(08:56):
knowing that they're going to go in to fight that guy.
But still that's not like all of your training, Like
how much of your training can you to vote versus
right I totally get that. Is it one time occurrence,
is it a limited occurrence versus you know, regularly going
up against right handed I get that, Yeah, definitely. But
and then the other benefit, of course is if you're
the left handed dude, your or gal, you know, then

(09:18):
you're always gonna you're pretty much always going to have
that advantage. Yeah, because I do, Yeah, I totally doong
I rock because you're you're still going to be training
to fight or play against the ninety percent of the
people who are right handed, but you're always going to
carry that left hand advantage in except I mean except
against the ten percent, well even the ten percent that
are lefties, you know, they're still gonna they're still most

(09:41):
of their training is going towards rights as well. So
you're gonna always have to have a certain amount of
advantage over the guy maand the end of the court
or the gladiator pit. Except indeed, so tell us what
happened with these French researchers who checked out this phenomenon. Yeah,
so this is this is an awesome study. This took
place back between two wasn't one in two thousand four,
and these French researchers decided to test this theory that

(10:05):
that above lefty battle superiority right there from the University
of Montpelier. Yes, and Montpelier, I believe that's the way.
That's way I always heard it when I was in
Canada living there. But okay, correct me if I'm wrong Canucks.
Um So, so yeah, basically they were like, let's let's

(10:25):
study this but instead of like watching like tennis players
or whatever, because sports is basically just sort of a
deviation from killing other people in their hands. Definitely. M yeah,
there's no doubt about that at all. I mean really,
I think everybody can pretty much agree that like sports
are like, yes, yeah, if like if people tune into sports,

(10:47):
but if war was on the other channel, they would
totally tune into war. Um. So yeah, they just said, well,
where can we really put this theory to the test,
And they decided to go to the places where they
had really high murder rates. And um, people were more
likely to commitment these murders with like handheld weapons or
their hands, etcetera. Right, So they are visiting societies, you know,
without the infiltration of guns, you know, somewhat simple societies.

(11:11):
And in these societies, again, the left handed person would
would seem to have the advantage and would seem better
prepared to survive these violent encounters. And sure enough, again
the rest of the world, ten percent of the population lefties.
In these areas they found as high as twenty seven
percent lefties. Okay, so that just means there's there's enough

(11:32):
violence going on that the lefty population, the percentage of
the the percentage of the population that was lefty was
higher because they're surviving more violent encounters than they're losing
out in right. Right, So there's a correlation between the
high murder rate and the occurrence of left handedness in
those societies. Yeah, that's pretty it's pretty interesting. And it wasn't, um,

(11:54):
I was. I was looking at the data in the paper. Um,
And if you want to read the paper, you should
look it up. Charlotte Floury, it's it's she has all
of her publications on her CV On the web, you
can find that paper itself and by her and her
co author Michelle Raymonde. And it was published in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society. And it had a nice
title and that was Handedness, Homicide and negative frequency dependent Selection. See,

(12:18):
I'm just really hoping for the day when we can
get that that that left handed percentile down to like
just think, I'll say, the streets will be no. Right. Yeah.
So here's another theory for you and why lift lefties
might kick button sports. And this comes from freelance writer
Julia Layton. She wrote an article for Housta Works and
whether left handers are quicker thinkers and writings. Okay, and

(12:39):
so this is more like in the brain where it's happening.
It's like fast decision making on the court or on
the battlefield. So the theory goes something like this. Um.
According to Julia, the two hemispheres are halves of the brain.
The right and left are pretty much identical, okay for
the most part. You know, they processed the same information
with data traveling between you know I via this nice

(13:01):
neural roadway pathway. Language processing, however, tends to take place
in one hemisphere the other, and it's often the left hemisphere,
but for left handed people it can actually take place
in both hemispheres. Um. Okay. In addition to language processing,
sensory data processing often goes to one hemisphere another. So say, um,

(13:24):
you know, data picked up on the right set up
right side of the body, whether it's with the right eye,
the right ear, or even the right hand or the
right foot. You get the idea here, it's going to
go to the left hemisphere for processing, and you know,
vice versa, data picked up on the left side goes
to the right hemisphere. I don't know why they have
to make this so complicated. Why can't the the left
you know side and the left brain lineup and the

(13:45):
right side and the right. But anyway, what's up with
this criss crossing business? What kind of makes sense? You're like,
I don't know, imagine sort of leaning into something I
don't know. Angles. So how does this relate to the
titles of a podcast? Um? Which is our lefties better?
It's arts? So if you think that people who write
with their left hands may be better at processing sensory

(14:05):
info and language with both hemispheres of their brain, um,
then maybe they're better at you know, handling all that
information in a fast fashion. Yeah, because I mean you've
really got to be like that, I mean out there
and I am like that. Yeah. Can we can we
here get a snuffing sound in there? So how do

(14:26):
you test this? I mean, it's nice for me to
spout off about how lefties are superior, but you know,
let's take it to the lab and a bunch of
guys from Australian National University did. They got together a
hundred people, eighty rights and twenty lefties and they tried
to test the flow of info between the two sides
of the brains um. The paper was published a few
years back in the journal ner Psychology if you're interested.

(14:47):
So here's how they tested it. They should participants a
dot on a computer screen. Sounds really fascinating. So far
screen computer screen had a dividing line down the center. Okay,
so it's kind of like like palm. Yeah, so you
see a dot, it would appear to the left to
the right of the dividing line. And then you, the participant,
how to press the button to indicate which side the

(15:08):
dot showed up on. Okay, so overall, when the dots
were appearing on the left and the right hand side.
Lefties were faster at this task. But change it around
and you just put the dot on one side and
righties were faster. So extrabolating from this, righties could be
faster at processing info that targets just one side of
the brain. Um, but lefties would be faster according to

(15:32):
this experiment and targeting you know, the both types of information. Alright,
So let's take you back to sports, and again, like
we kind of said in the beginning, if lefties are
indeed better at processing sensory info with the two hemispheres,
they could have a slight advantage in sports, gaming, other activities.
So I pay you kind of wish you were lefty

(15:52):
if it's going to make you a better game er. Huh.
It's not about being a great gamer. It's about enjoying
the video games, right, It's not about the competition. Yeah, exactly. Sure.
Do you really believe that? I do believe that. Yeah,
some people, I mean, I think they're kind of two
schools of thought. They're the people who like play games
and are like really really good at games, and you know,
others that want to enjoy like the storytelling aspect of it.

(16:13):
At all, but I mean they're still gonna be there's
still games that, like say, I'm probably one of the
best in the world at really Oh yeah, you want
to name some of this? Uh yeah, Actually there's a
game called Virtual Pro Wrestling too, came out for sixty four.
I could probably beat just about anybody listeners, if you're
out there, I dat a challenge Robert on this. You'd
have to like come to my house to play. Can't

(16:33):
you play it? It's not online or anything, So it's
really hard for me to back that up. But it's
just an idle claim it. I firmly believe that I'm
wasted way too much of my life playing that game,
and it probably is going to pay off if somebody
comes to my house for a throw town, you know,
so let's let's get back to the steady for sex.
So yeah, saterate, if lefties are indeed better at prossing,

(16:55):
sincere info with these two hemispheres, they could have, you know,
the advantage in sports and the theoretically they could use
both hemispheres of the brand to manage that stimuli. Like
the thing that's coming to my mind is like I'm
imagining like a dude on a football field, and it's
like instead of like one guy coming at him from
one direction, it's like two guys coming at him, right yeah,
and he's like better able to process like both of

(17:16):
these these guys, what's the ball? And he manages to
catch the ball and right yeah, because like especially football field,
especially since like a situation where you'd have just also
you can have all sorts of stuff going on, crowds
growing in your ears. It's kind of like Friday night lights.
If you're seeing that too, I know of it, but
I've never seen. Well. So, the last thing I want
to say about lefties outside of sports, Um, this study

(17:37):
that Julie was talking about, they said that a left
he could also being a left he could also benefit
you an old age. So the idea is, with a
greater ability from one brain hemisphere to quickly back up
the tasks of the other, that left handed seniors could
retain mental quickness longer than their right handed counterparts. Well
that's cool, but I would I would keep playing Sudoku

(17:58):
or whatever it is to keep up that mental acuity. Yeah,
just don't let it be behind the wheel, right, because
you're still gonna want to right. So if you're old
and and a lefty ear in trouble. Yeah. So this
is a great podcast, especially for lefties, because it gives
you so much fuel to just go out there and
talk about how great you are. So I've been wanting

(18:21):
to do this podcast forever. So we'd love to hear
from you, your thoughts, all the lefties out there, some
of the varieties, perhaps just a few though. If you
want to write in, send us an email at science
Stuff at how staff first dot com. And we also
got some listener mail going on, oh yeah, yeah we do.
Are you reading or am I reading? Come might do
the honors? Okay, you go for it. So this listen

(18:47):
your mail is that from Valerie. And Vala works at
a prosthetic company. She she manufactures prosthetics, Prosthetic school. Yeah,
and she went in to say, thank you guys so
much for doing your prosthetic podcast. I work as a proscetist.
Pronounced that carefully if you don't want to sound like
a quote unquote lady of the evening. UM. So she

(19:09):
was saying that when we were talking about some of
the paralympians. UM. When we were talking about that, remember
we were kind of putting it out there, whether paralympians
could eventually be you know, surpassed people who you know,
held all their limbs are and she Valerie was breaking
it down to a matter of um energy return, and

(19:30):
what she said was that an anatomical human leg can
return of the energy easily. Um. And the problem here
is that until we can figure out how to get
that with a prosthetic limb, um, you're only getting ninety
nine point energy return. So this is actually what let
um what was his name, oscar Um qualify, Yeah, the

(19:54):
dude with the really awesome in South Africa, because he's
not getting that energy energy return yet. You know above
and Fjord the ones they're able to engineer that and
uh and and in equal the the energy efficiency of
human limbs then yeah um. And Valori also wrote that Yeah,

(20:14):
as to the cost, yes, the new fancy ones are
very dear. But for Vat's returning home from the Wars,
everything they need is paid for, which is surprising and
great news if that's the case. Yeah, I think there's
a there was like a part in the wire where
they like the last season when they dealt with that,
like dude's getting like prosthetics and she was also writing
that most new developments in prosthetics can be tracked to

(20:36):
wars so um, World War two equal improvements and knee
and modular components, Vietnam, equal improvements in MYO electrics, Iraq, Afghanistan,
targeted reinnervation, and the Dark Behnd. The Dark Behnd. Yeah, Yeah,
that was a really cool one. Yeah, because basically, if
you are in that, in the business of sending you know,

(20:57):
your citizens off to become named in a war, you
want to send like the message a we will do
what we everything we can possibly do to you know,
make life easier when you come back without that hand. Uh.
And also, you don't want all your veterans standing around
with no legs because it kind of looks bad for
new recruits. I mean, seriously, you don't want people sitting

(21:18):
around on boards with with missing limbs. If you've had
a nice government, you know funded uh, you know, artificial
leg you know, you're not even going to tell the difference. Yeah.
So we also heard from Jeremy and Jeremany used to
work for a company that made dental implants, and he
was talking about ostio integration. Do you remember what ostio integration. Yeah,
that's where like titanium and bone. Yeah, yeah, and he

(21:40):
was saying, um, for some of the dental implants that
he was working on, it took over six months to
fully integrate, but newer designs got this time done to
like less than three months to fully integrate, and with
the mechanism was at work to speed up the integration
was you um dows the surface in an acid bath
to rough it up and make it easier for the
bone to integrate with the implant, which I thought was

(22:00):
really interesting. So if you know that process isn't occurring
fast enough, you dump some acid in there and speed
it up. That's my dad about that, he said, Yeah,
thanks Jeremy for reading. And uh, let's see, we had
a we had reheard from Amy Claire who wanted to
let us know that our prosthetic podcast reminded her of
a Flannery O'Connor story that she just been shooting for
her lips. I always get the titles confused. Good country people,

(22:24):
good country. I was about to say, good Man is
hard to find, but that's a different story. Yeah. So
if you guys have anything to say again, send it
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(22:46):
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