Cat begging for food treat:
 

This is an interesting video....


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This winter, I've trained Maya (our younger black cat) to lift her paw for food. It was fairly easy to do. Now she is generalizing it to any "please" situation. She does it on the screened back porch to ask us to let her back in.

But a friend of ours put up this video today, and I think I could expand on this trick and get her to put her paw to her mouth like this fellow did. I'll have to use shrimp for the reward though, as she won't touch hot dogs, etc! She might do it for Canadian bacon which she begs for at breakfast. Maya has shown talent for training since she was a kitten. We've several games we've taught her to play... so this might work. After all the winter is long and we are all having cabin fever lately! LOL

Weezie however prefers to train US. The latest is the singing in the morning to get us out of bed! eeeeeouuuuu
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eee....Since hubby retired we are tending to sleep in during this winter...and she just won't have that. Weezie has learned to vocalize now quite a bit-- Maya taught her that. Weezie has been oblivious to the paw trick so far, but I am still trying it on her too.

weird question :o

Can animals be predominately left legged/handed or right legged/handed like humans or would they be ambidextrous with the front ones? I just wonder this because of the little cat in the video. For a split second I thought the cat was going to do the same thing with the other paw and front leg, but it only used the same one in the end.

Cute video thanks mrsD.

Maya lifts her left paw. I showed her what to do, and lifted my right hand with the fingers together and she imitated that and I rewarded her. So her left was opposite my right. That is how we started. Now she lifts when I say --lift your footydooty....on command.

Today I got her to move her paw towards her mouth but it was only 1/2 way. She will only do it once, before I give the dish.
So my next step is to use bits of shrimp...she is very eager for shrimp, and may be more motivated.

Weezie just looks at me with that look cats give.... "why should I do that stupid thing for food? " But she does imitate Maya some now, especially with the vocalizing, so who knows..she may learn the trick too. I'll have to get a photo of this somehow. Maybe hubby will help and do the asking and I can catch the paw raise that way. She is at him every morning for that Canadian Bacon bit.

It is often said that all Polar Bears are left-handed, this is a fallacy. As to other animals there is an interesting article on Laterality in animals on Wikipedia.
The short answer is yes, many animals show preferance as we do.

Dave.

Very interesting thanks, especially the part about the horses and the guide dogs. Food for thought.

p.s. some horse racing tracks here are clockwise and others counterclockwise.
I had always wondered about the blinders too and why they have to wear them. I just thought it was because they were skittish but there appears to be more to it.