Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 April 6

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April 6

Crow handedness

Do crows exhibit handedness, i.e when they land do they usually fold their right wing over the left, left over right, or show no preference?69.144.60.218 (talk) 23:25, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Since they don't have hands, handedness as applied to crows always seems to apply to how they use their feet, e.g. when manipulating sticks. A web search for handedness and crows find plenty of suggestions of handedness in this sense, but I can't find anything about how they fold their wings.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:39, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

The more general term is laterality (includes species that don't have hands). And yes, crows do exhibit laterality:

• "Behavioural Ecology Research Group - Crows - Laterality". users.ox.ac.uk.
• "Human–like, population–level specialization in the manufacture of pandanus tools by New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 22 February 2000. pp. 403–413. doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1015.

—2606:A000:1126:28D:F935:C7E2:FE1:E49 (talk) 06:26, 8 April 2019 (UTC)