Why yawns are contagious—in all kinds of animals - Last Episode
Why yawns are contagious—in all kinds of animals - Last Episode
Q: Do all animals yawn the same way?
A: We’ve done a number of large-scale comparative studies, where we’ve recorded the yawn durations from over 100 mammalian and avian species. We find that even when controlling for body size, there are very strong positive relationships between how long an animal yawns and how large and complex their brain is.
Q: One of the most curious things about yawning is that it can be contagious. Do all animals yawn contagiously?
A: We’ve been talking about spontaneous yawns up to this point—those are internally, physiologically driven. Contagious yawns are elicited by seeing or hearing yawns in others, and [they] have only been documented in highly social species, humans included. There’s a wide variability in that response among individuals. Some individuals are very susceptible to yawn contagion, while others are not.
Q: What accounts for that variability?
A: Some studies suggest that individual differences in empathy may be contributing to this response. If we see someone yawn, and that reflexively triggers the same response in us, that could be kind of a basic indicator of empathetic processing. However, other studies have failed to show that relationship. I’m of the view that the jury’s still out.
Q: So why do we yawn when we see someone else yawning?
A: Contagious yawning may have evolved to synchronize group behavior—yawns often cluster during particular times of day that coincide with transitions and activity. It also may have evolved to increase vigilance within a group. The basic rationale is that if yawning is an indicator that one individual is experiencing diminished arousal, then seeing another person yawn might, in turn, increase the observer’s vigilance to compensate for the low vigilance of the yawner. The spreading throughout the group of contagious yawns might then increase the vigilance of the entire group.
I conducted a study last year that tested this. We showed people arrays of images that included threatening stimuli—images of snakes—and nonthreatening stimuli—images of frogs—and timed how fast they could pick out those images after seeing videos of people yawning or moving their mouths in other ways. After seeing other people yawn, their ability to identify and detect snakes, the threatening stimuli, rapidly improved. However, following the observation of yawning, frog detection was unaffected.
Q: You read, write, and think about yawns all day. Are you yawning all the time as a result?
A: When I first started studying this subject, I was yawning excessively. I was reading the literature and writing notes and writing papers, and I found that I was just yawning all the time. But over time, I became kind of habituated to the effects. I still yawn contagiously during social interactions, but seeing the stimuli that I use in the lab no longer produces the effect.
The End.........🙂
Source- BYTESS JOOSSE
Copywrite By-Bankole Kehinde John
The Writing Pen Of Science.....✍️
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