New study says 58% of dogs are right handed (paw’ed).
In a new study, researchers analyzed data from a food-retrieval task
involving nearly 18,000 dogs.
Dog owners were asked to obtain a plastic or cardboard tube that
was wide enough for a dog’s paw.
The owners were then asked to place a treat near the end
of the tube to retrieve the treat.
The procedure was done three times before owners were asked
to characterize their dogs’ behavior based on whether
they used their left or right forepaw.
The owners were also asked to classify their dogs based
on their age group—puppy, young adult, adult, or elderly—and sex.
74 percent of the 17,901 tested dogs showed a clear paw preference,
while the remaining 26 percent used both paws equally during the food retrieval task.
Of the dogs that showed a clear preference, 58.3 percent were right-handed.
41.7 percent of the dogs that showed a paw preference were left-handed.
Comparatively, only 10.6 percent of humans are left-handed,
which proves that dogs are far more likely to be left-handed than humans.