How Hands Work
Look at one of your hands. It has a palm, four fingers, and a thumb. Each finger has three bones and two knuckles, and is attached to your palm by another knuckle. Your thumb is different. It has only two bones and one knuckle, and it comes out the side of your palm. Look closely at the back of your hand while you wiggle your fingers. You can see the cords, called tendons, which go from your arm muscles, across your knuckles to make you fingers move.

Our hands have two kinds of grips: the power grip and the precision grip. In the power grip our fingers are clenched tightly into a fist and the strong muscles in our shoulders and upper arms provide the power for this grip. In the precision grip, our fingers are curled more loosely and the muscles we use are right in our fingers and in our forearms. This is the grip we use for careful tasks like writing.

Hands At Work
Touch is an important way we learn about our world, and our hands are better at touching than any other part of our bodies. Touch also helps us to communicate. When we touch someone or something, we are saying a lot about the way we feel just by how we touch them, even though we don't use words. Animals are very good at sensing a person's mood from touch. People who want to be trusted by animals, like veterinarians, learn to have what we call, "kind hands." That means they use a gentle but firm touch. This calms a nervous or frightened animal because they understand through the touch that the vet or trainer is kind and "in charge."