We keep keep our dog food outside in 20" x 20" container that has a round screw on lid. One night I watched a racoon unscrew the lid and take it off and proceed to gorge on dog food… I was pretty impressed. We always know they’ve been there if the dog’s water is brown from them washing the food.
I have a tentative proposal for a definition: if an animal uses its fore-paws to hold food to its mouth, then those are “hands.”
Raccoons, mice, koala, pandas, all the apes and monkeys… Um… Bats? Do bats do this?
Are there any really significant exceptions to this rule? (“Did I err?”)
Squirrels and chipmunks do that.
If shuffling cards is a minimum prerequisite to having hands, I don’t have hands.
Parrots bring food to their mouth with their prehensile hind paws. Does that count?
https://pixfeeds.com/images/birds/parrots/640-1200-485058884-mitred-parakeet.jpg
Animal Farm defined wings as “legs”, because they’re used for locomotion. By that standard, I see no problem defining some bird hindlimbs as “hands”.
re shuffling cards, grin!
re squirrels and chipmunks, yeah, they have forepaws that are, well, kinda hand-like.
re birds, I did say “forepaws,” so I dunno… I guess that could be kicked back and forth… I thought, later, about octopuses and lobsters, but, again, they aren’t using “forelimbs.”
I guess we’ve fallen into speculation and opinion, and the factual question has been answered, so if y’all wanna close this puppy, thank you for entertaining the question!