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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

> Mary is “left-trunked”—the equivalent of left-handed in humans—so holding the hose made it easier for her to reach her left side. She tended to spray her right side with her trunk, because she preferred to curve her proboscis that way.

I can't believe this line, it's such a ridiculous and bizarre thing it sounds like a joke. The famously singly-appendeged creature can also be left-handed. Come on.

Apparently though, not a joke, elephants really are right or left-"handed." https://dspace.spbu.ru/handle/11701/7138 "Context-dependent lateralization of trunk movements in wild Asian elephants." What a hilarious planet.

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Lateralisation is extremely common, snails are famously lateralised leading some of their predators to be such (they have jaws curving to one side, to better follow the shell). Snail shells mostly spiral to the right (90% IIRC, about the same as right handedness in humans) but in areas where lateralised predators are very common left-handed snails have a much higher presence, up to 30%.

Molecules have a handed-ness. everything from there on up is doomed to have that problem somewhere.

Why, what makes you think there’s any connection? Molecule handedness doesn’t affect animal handedness, they are completely independent things with completely independent mechanisms, and the materials in between animal and molecule (shell, bone, skin, nerves, vasculature, etc.) don’t have any known handedness. We already know that not everything has that problem.

I think they just see asymmetry as a parent of handednes. Bones and skin and so are not symmetric, as probably anything in the universe (but some specific molecules, atoms and crystals?)

It goes deeper than that. Fundamental forces have chirality. This was a little controversial when first discovered.

Mammoth remains can be identified as right or left trunked by the shine on one of their tusks. Gotta hang that trunk up somewhere

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