“The apes, having short thumbs and long fingers, are handicapped in relation to delicate manual dexterity,” states The New Encyclopædia Britannica.

There is another important difference between the hand of a man and that of an ape. About a quarter of the motor cortex in the human brain is devoted to the muscles of your hands. The human motor cortex, explains Professor Guyton’s Textbook of Medical Physiology, “is quite different from that of lower animals” and makes possible “an exceptional capability to use the hand, the fingers, and the thumb to perform highly dexterous manual tasks.”

Man’s hand, states The New Encyclopædia Britannica, is probably “the most elegantly skillful biological organ” and one that “distinguishes him from all other living primates.”