A hand (med./lat.: manus, pl. manūs) is a prehensile, multi-fingered extremity located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints remarkably similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having either "hands" or "paws" on their front limbs.
Hands are the main structures for physically manipulating the environment, used for both gross motor skills (such as grasping a large object) and fine motor skills (such as picking up a small pebble). The fingertips contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, feet, legs), each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, so that handedness, or the preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pencil, reflects individual brain functioning.
Some evolutionary anatomists use the term hand to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally — for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.
The human hand has 27 bones, 14 of which are the phalanges (proximal, medial, and distal) of the fingers. The metacarpal is the bone that connects the fingers and the wrist. Each human hand has 5 metacarpals.
Read more about Hand: Definitions, Evolution, Additional Images
Other articles related to "hand, hands":
... The specific name means "with a long hand" from Latin longus, "long", and manus, "hand" ... Yixianosaurus has a very long hand, 140% of the length of the 89 millimetres (3.5 in) long humerus ... The large hands could have served in catching prey or assisted climbing ...
... board and is used to determine where the player has to put their hand or foot ... into four labeled sections right foot, left foot, right hand and left hand ... After spinning, the combination is called (for example "right hand yellow") and players must move their matching hand or foot to a circle of the correct color ...
... written before 1758) Smith speaks of the invisible hand, to which ignorants refer to explain natural phenomena otherwise unexplainable Fire burns ... and in The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith speaks of an invisible hand, never of the invisible hand ... They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal ...
... Since Smith's time, the principle of the invisible hand has been further incorporated into economic theory ... note 3 at the bottom), claims that Smith believed that the invisible hand was that of God ... The invisible hand is traditionally understood as a concept in economics, but Robert Nozick argues in Anarchy, State and Utopia that substantively the same concept exists in a number of other ...
... of Smith's thesis, criticizes how the term of the "invisible hand" has been used ... The invisible hand, he wrote, destroys the possibility of a decent human existence "unless government takes pains to prevent" this outcome, as must be assured in "every improved and civilized ... So as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality ...
Famous quotes containing the word hand:
“Aeneas. ‘Tis the old Nestor.
Hector. Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,
That hast so long walked hand in hand with time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks;
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)