Hand

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"Hands" redirects here. For other uses, see Hand (disambiguation) and Hands (disambiguation).

Hand

Palmar and Dorsal aspects of human right hand

X-ray of human back hand

Details
Latin

Manus

Vein

dorsal venous network of hand

Nerve

Ulnar, median, radial nerves

Identifiers

MeSH

A01.378.800.667

TA

A01.1.00.025

FMA

9712
Anatomical terminology

A hand (med./lat.: manus, pl. mans) 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.
Fingers are 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 homologousloss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.[1]
The human hand has 27 bones, not including the sesamoid bone, the number of which varies
between people,[2] 14 of which are the phalanges (proximal, intermediate and distal) of the fingers.
The metacarpals are the bones that connect the fingers and the wrist. Each human hand has five
metacarpals[3] and 8 carpal bones. Among humans, the hands play an important function in body
language and sign language.