I had an accident when I was young that means that I am more aware than many how useful our hands are and what a nuisance it is when you can’t use them properly. I can’t easily use my right hand to pick up or hold things and often use my left to manoeuvre things into place. I have joked that I am half Primate and half not.
The story of opposable thumbs is often one part of how we explain to ourselves how clever we are. I referred to this habit in another post on Anthropomorphism.
I have recently been taking enlarged videos of the birds in our garden, so I have been looking at them more closely than usual. Birds, as you probably know, are basically evolved dinosaurs and, because of their size, only have little brains. Like with the poor Goldfish, people use terms like ‘bird brain’ as insults. In fact birds can see things that are completely invisible to us, have amazing ability to respond to visual signals with physical action at great speed and pigeons can recognise drawings and photos of trees as trees. Birds have also been shown to recognise themselves in a mirror.
So how do birds relate to opposable thumbs? Well some birds have one of the toe/fingers on each foot facing backwards. This gives them advantages in all sorts of situations related to there particular lifestyle, so we are not alone in that ability. In fact there are several species of animals that have similar adaptations.
Whilst I was staring at my hand thinking about this, I realised that the thumb is not the main problem. It is the fact that I can’t control the fingers either. On my left I can touch any one finger to any other. On my right I can’t do that and the only way I can reliably get fingers to touch their neighbour is by curling the hand up so all four touch. Relating that to watching the birds in the garden, I have watched them pick up a seed, place it between their toes, that are also holding the perch and then use their beak and tongue to remove bits of husk and eat the seed inside. I am just jealous, of the dextrous toes, the very useful beak and the ability to bend that way.
So before calling someone a bird brain (you shouldn’t be so insulting anyway), think of trying to make a birds nest. Look at one and think of the dexterity and skill needed to make it. In many ways it is likely that we have flourished because of our inabilities, that have made us have to find other ways of doing things.