Hey guys.  I want to try an experiment.  Raise your hand.  Did you raise your right hand or did you raise your left?  If you raised your right hand, you're in the majority.  70-95% of humans are right-handed.  Even though our left handed friends are the minority in humans, did you know the majority of parrots are lefties?  Thinking about this has made me want to know which of the animals are righties and which ones are lefties.

I've never really paid attention to it before and now I'm really curious, so let's experiment and see.

(Intro)

First up is Zoe the parrot.  I have a nut that's too big for her to break with just her beak.  She has to use her foot to hold it.  Which one do you think she's going to use?  Let's see.  Here you go, Zoe.  That's her left foot.  Are you a leftie?  She's a leftie!  Like I said, most parrots are lefties, so this isn't super surprising, but I'm going to try this experiment on some more unusual animals.

Okay, next up is Kizmit the African crested porcupine.  Kizmit doesn't realy hold things with her paws, or rather, she holds with both paws at the same time, so I think I have to get her to do something else, like maybe like, step up onto something?  So if I can get her to step up onto this little stump.  Oh, that was her left paw.  Are you a leftie?  I dunno.  I think we have to try it again.  I'm gonna turn you around.  Now step up on the--that, it looked like her right paw.  Maybe she's ambidextrous?  That was her left paw.  She did that all on her own.  Let's go up on this stump again.  Left paw.  That's three lefties and one rightie.  Let's see, I want to put my leg on a little bit higher and see if she can step right up on to it.  Let's see.  Ready?  Can you get up here?  Food.  That was her right paw that she set down first.  Are you coming up here?  That was her left paw.  So, that's a little inconclusive, but that was fun.

I want to keep trying.  Let's go to another animal.  Alright, let's try an animal with hands more like ours.  Next up is Mimi the marmoset.  Okay, let's see what hand she grabs this toy with.  Wanna get it?  That was her left hand.  Let's try again.  I have a treat in my pocket.  Mimi.  Do you wanna get this.  Uhh.  Both.  

She's holding it with her left hand though, look at that.  She's holding with her left, but she's holding on to the screen with her right.  What does that mean?  This time, I'm gonna try and hold it up higher so she can't reach it with her mouth at all, even if she stands up.  She has to grab it with her hand. 

Okay, real high.  Gosh, she grabbed it with both hands, guys.  Do you want a sunflower seed?  Caught it with her left.  It almost fell off the shelf and she caught it with her left hand.  I think that's another point for lefty.  So I'm actually going to call this left-handed for Mimi because she has a preference for her left hand when she's eating food, so I'm gonna call her a lefty.

Alright, guys, let's go check on someone else.  Okay, I have one that I'm not sure will work, but I want to try it anyway: Loki the water dragon.  I've never seen Loki use his front hands to hold onto anything except for branches, so maybe if I offer him a branch, he'll have a preferred front hand to step onto it with.  This is gonna get--you're--he tried to eat it, okay.  I'm gonna put this right in front of your face, like under your chin. Will you step up onto it?  Euhhh.  Oh, what was that, what was that?  I think we need to slow down the footage and look at it again, aaaand it's a tie!  I'm not sure if Loki would appreciate if we did that again, but what I do want to do is try something else.  Let's see if he'll just like, step onto his normal branch.

Come here, buddy.  Here, go on to that branch.  Oh guys, I couldn't tell.  Alright, let's try right here.  Ready?  He touched with his right first.  Alright, Loki is doing great.  Let's try this one more time.

Oh, look, look!  That was his right.  Good job Loki! That was awesome.  That was really fun.  Here, you can go back home, up your wall, or wherever you want to hang out using your right front foot.  Let's try another one.  I have a great idea.  Athena is an emperor scorpion and I want to see if she's left or right clawed.  So Athena's personality is that she's quite defensive of her area so what I'm going to do is introduce a novel object and kind of annoy her with it a little bit and see which claw she uses to kind of get it out of her face.  Ok, here, I'm going in.  Oh, she's totally using her left claw.  Look at that! And again!  She's definitely left-clawed.  
   I have one other one that I think is gonna be really good.   Huckleberry the beaver.  Huckleberry gets really excited about food so I think we need to use something that's not food.  I got this idea off the internet.   What I'm going to do is put something on his nose or face and see which paw he uses to get it off.  His fur is actually a little bit wet, so I'm going to use this tape so it can actually stick, but it's not gonna stick too hard.  Alright, buddy.  You ready? What's on... You've got something on your head.  He's grooming himself.  Get it off, buddy, get it off.  It's right there, on your head.  He's hit it with both.  I don't know,  I feel like I should have like put it on his nose more so he could reach it.  There we go.  Ready?  Right there.  On your nose.  Get it off, get it off, get it off!  Buddy, you have something on your nose.  Do you want to get it off?  Oh he did it.  Get it off, get it,  oh I'll help.  That was, that was good.  Oh my goodness, are you left-handed?  Well, now we know.  Huckleberry the beaver is left-handed.  
    So, what we learned from today's experiment was it's actually really hard to tell if they're left or  right handed without probably doing like a hundred different versions, um, in all different areas.

So, not super conclusive, but still really fun.  And if you guys would like to try it with your animals, let me know what kind of animal you have and if they're left or right pawed/footed/handed.  And if you'd like to continue going on animal adventures with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel.  Thank you so much, and we'll see you next week.