The ever clever science writer, Carl Zimmer, has an item in the new issue of National Geographic, accompanied by a lovely short video illustration, which you can see by clicking the image above (also see a sample of the opening below):

The Common Hand

Humans, of course, have them. So do bats, cats, dolphins, elephants, and frogs. Our artwork takes you inside these useful appendages.

By Carl Zimmer

Illustration by Bryan Christie

The hand is where the mind meets the world. We humans use our hands to build fires and sew quilts, to steer airplanes, to write, dig, remove tumors, pull a rabbit out of a hat. The human brain, with its open-ended creativity, may be the thing that makes our species unique. But without hands, all the grand ideas we concoct would come to nothing but a very long to-do list.