If you’ve ever wondered why you’re a lefty or a righty, you may have just assumed that you were taught it when you were little, or that it was because of activity on one side of your brain.

Well, it turns out, it’s neither. Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany have found that you develop a preference for one hand in the womb as early as the eighth week of pregnancy – and it’s actually down to what’s happening in your spinal cord, not your brain.

From analysing gene expression in the spinal cord during the eighth to the twelfth week period, they discovered that gene activity in the spinal cord is already asymmetrical in the womb.

This is the real reason that you’re left or right-handed