Cool Facts About Ambidextrous People

Cool Facts About Ambidextrous People You think lefties are rare? Truly ambidextrous people only make up about 1 percent of the population. While there are more people who can use their non-dominant hand nearly as well as their dominant one, people who have no dominant hand and can use both hands with equal skill, are about 1 in 100. The rarest form of ambidexterity is when people can use both hands with strong skill, all the time. These people can be called “ambidextral,” which means “pertaining equally to the right-hand side and the left-hand side.”

There are other people, however, who don’t have equal skill with both hands but who use their right hands for some things and their left hands for others. Another term altogether, “ambisinistral,” refers to people who have no dominant hand, and use both hands… but neither hand is very strong. As Mental Floss puts it, both hands have the approximate skill of a right-hander’s left hand.

Since ambidextrous and leftie brains are so similar, it’s only natural for one to start out as the other. For hundreds of years, there was quite a stigma surrounding left-handedness, as the left hand carried Biblical associations with witchcraft and demons. The word “sinister” comes from the Latin word “sinistra,” which originally meant “left.” Many left-handed people, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century, experienced pressure to use their right hands instead and ended up developing ambidexterity. 

Read more at rd.com

Things You Didn't Know About Ambidextrous People | Reader's Digest