hand

Also known as manus

A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm 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 extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking.

OverviewAI-generated

The hand is a biological structure present in a quantity of two per individual. It is categorized under the Commons category "Hands" and has a corresponding gallery titled "Hand". In digital text, the hand is represented by Unicode characters such as 🖑 and 🖐.

In medical and scientific contexts, the hand is identified by the NCI Thesaurus ID C32712. It is a frequent subject of research, appearing in 636,312 PubMed records associated with the query "hand". Additionally, the concept is referenced by 936 other encyclopedia articles within the Vinony graph.

Synthesized by Vinony from 8 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Key facts

Anatomy.Name: Hand
Anatomy.Latin: manus
Anatomy.Greek: χείρ (kheír)
Anatomy.Image: File:Hand, fingers - back.jpg
Anatomy.Caption: Back of a human's left hand
Anatomy.Width: 150px
Anatomy.Image2: File:Palm, fingers.jpg
Anatomy.Caption2: Front of a human's left hand
Anatomy.Width2: 150px
Anatomy.Vein: Dorsal venous network of hand
Anatomy.Nerve: Ulnar, median, radial nerves

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

636,312 papers

Hand infections.ReviewBritish journal of hospital medicine (London, England : 2005) · 2020Pillai S, Campbell E, Mifsud A et al.DOI: 10.12968/hmed.2020.0234
Guidelines in Practice: Hand Hygiene.AORN journal · 2023Speth JDOI: 10.1002/aorn.13964
Minor Hand Surgery Procedures.ReviewThe Surgical clinics of North America · 2025Scott SS, Stevens M, Sawhney JDOI: 10.1016/j.suc.2025.03.010
Hand transplantation--a review.ReviewBulletin of the Hospital for Joint Disease (2013) · 2014MacKay BJ, Nacke E, Posner M
Alien Hand: Current Research Trends.ReviewCurrent neurology and neuroscience reports · 2025Mark VWDOI: 10.1007/s11910-025-01449-z
Hand anatomy.ReviewBritish journal of hospital medicine (London, England : 2005) · 2016Maw J, Wong KY, Gillespie PDOI: 10.12968/hmed.2016.77.3.C34
How the US Army Forged Hand Surgery.ReviewThe Journal of hand surgery · 2020Dunn JC, Lenhart MK, Higgins JP et al.DOI: 10.1016/j.jhsa.2019.10.008
Hand injuries.ReviewCurrent problems in surgery · 1993Weeks PMDOI: 10.1016/0011-3840(93)90003-y

via PubMed

~25 min read

Encyclopedic overview

18 sections

Contents

Structure
Areas
Bones
Arches
Muscles
Intrinsic
Extrinsic
Nerve supply
Blood supply
Skin
Variation
Functions
Clinical significance
Evolution
Additional images
See also
References
External links

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 homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “hand” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.