left and right

Listen to this:

Everyone knows whether they are right-handed, or left-handed. Few know whether they are right or left-eyed.

Do you?

If you don't know, stretch out an arm, either will do, and point with a finger to a distant corner of the room—keep both eyes open.

Staying in this position close one eye, then the other. In one case your eye will match whatever you're pointing at in the corner, in the other your finger will be pointing way off the mark.

If you're on target, that's your leading eye.

If you're right-eyed you probably see the above figure [unfortunately I can't reproduce it here] as a rabbit, if you're left-eyed you probably plump for a bird.*

Well! I'd never heard of that before. I'm left-eyed by the way. And right away that led me to wonder about the percentages of people being left-eyed and right-eyed. Is it about the same as for being left-handed (which I believe to be about ten percent)? Is there a correlation between being left-eyed and left-handed? I'm right-handed, but because I was starting to experience some pain in using my right hand so much, I now manoeuvre (quite skilfully I might add) the mouse with my left hand. And did you know that left-handed people figure more in certain activities and occupations? Like the visual arts, and among astronauts? I must confess that while the visual arts didn't surprise me (because of greater right-brain activity), the latter did.

So, as with many other things, I immediately went to Wikipedia, and according to this link, about two-thirds of the population is right-eye dominant, but that the side of the dominant hand and eye don't always match. Interesting.

* Fletcher, Alan. The art of looking sideways. London: Phaidon Press, 2001.