International Journal of Comparative Psychology

Efficiency of hand use in nonhuman primates is often difficult to assess because of the relatively small number of responses made with a nonpreferred hand. The present study compared measures of reach efficiency in 8 galagos ( Galago moholi ), 4 left-hand preferent and 4 right-hand preferent subjects, tested in a reach apparatusdesigned to elicit equal numbers of responses by the left and right hands. The effect of variant or invariant target placement within sessions was also assessed by the use of both blocked and randomized trials. Efficiency was defined in terms of the percentage of successful reaches and the average duration of time required for reach execution. There was no effect of target variance on strength of hand preference or on either measure of performance efficiency. Preferred and nonpreferred hands did not differ with respect to these two measures. There was also no difference in the percentage of successful reaches between the left and right hands. However, for 7 of 8 subjects the left hand generated faster reach times than did the right hand, regardless of hand preference. The greater execufion speed with the left arm/hand is interpreted as exemplifying a lateralized neural advantage for the execution of ballistic reaching in galago species. The highly consistent timing of this prey capture behavior in the galago supports the view that this arm/hand movement is ballistic in type.