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Updated: Mar 15, 2026

A Laboratory Method to Measure Contagious Yawning in Rats
Published on: June 14, 2019
Presence of contagious yawning in sheep
Tomohiro Yonezawa1, Kohei Sato2, Mona Uchida1
1Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract:
Contagious yawning is triggered by others yawning, and it has previously been reported in humans, primates and several experimental and companion mammals. Whereas it might be a response to an innate releasing mechanism, contagious yawning is also considered to involve emotional contagion. Here, we demonstrate that sheep, the animal model of livestock animals, also experience contagious yawning. Twelve adult castrated Corriedale sheep were used in this study. Pairs of sheep were adjacently restrained with or without a wooden divider panel to shield them from viewing the other. Their behaviors were video-recorded for 3 days in each condition. Sheep yawned 2.0 ± 1.1 and 1.2 ± 1.1 times/day/head in the unshielded and shielded conditions, respectively. Unshielded restrained sheep yawned within 1 min after the other one 11.1% of the time, while shielded pairs did not exhibit contagious yawning. Rumination was also highly synchronized under the unshielded condition. These data reveal that contagious yawning and behavioral synchronicity occur in ruminants like sheep, making them a suitable animal model to investigate contagious yawning and the underlying mechanism.
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