Explaining the evolutionary explanation for handedness

This is a wonderful little video that is absolutely packed with great ideas about how evolution works, how human evolution works, and how two different evolutionary pressures pushing in opposite directions reach equilibrium.

It also makes wonderful use of infographic techniques, using color and quantity throughout the video to clearly convey numerical and conceptual ideas that might be difficult to capture otherwise.

There’s also a lot about human culture here. The video makes the argument that one of the “cooperative” benefits of being in the dominant right-handed group is access to tools: basically, if you are in the majority, you are more likely to be able to use tools in an advantageous way. The environment is culture: what tools are out there and which hand they are designed for.

I am definitely going to use this in future versions of my Evolution of Cooperation course!

Thanks to my colleague Ágnes Mócsy for pointing me towards this video!