Wild kangaroos were observed using their left hand to perform several routine tasks, displaying a clear population-wide tendency.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology examined several kangaroo species in the wild for their work. While most humans are right-handed, the kangaroos could be the only other species to have a dominant hand among most of its population.
"According to a special-assessment scale of handedness adopted for primates, kangaroos pulled down the highest grades," study co-author Yegor Malashichev, of Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, said in a press release. "We observed a remarkable consistency in responses across bipedal species in that they all prefer to use the left, not the right, hand.
"What we observed in reality we did not initially expect.
"But the more we observed, the more it became obvious that there is something really new and interesting in the wild."
The researchers watched the kangaroos use their left hand for basic tasks like grooming and feeding, BBC News reported. The animal was not believed to be capable of having a dominant hand because of certain mental capabilities.
"Unfortunately, even my own colleagues think that studying left-handed macropods is not a serious issue, but any study that proves true handedness in another bipedal species contributes to the study of brain symmetry and mammalian evolution," Janeane Ingram, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Tasmania, told BBC News. "As one of our reviewers pointed out, laterality is also obvious in how parrots hold their food or how your dog shakes hands.
"But these examples of lateralisation have not been proven at the population level."
