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Updated: Sep 3, 2025

A Laboratory Method to Measure Contagious Yawning in Rats
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Interspecific Contagious Yawning in Humans.

Andrew C Gallup1, Sabina Wozny1

  • 1Psychology and Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences Programs, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Utica, NY 13502, USA.

Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI
|July 27, 2022
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People can catch yawns from other species, demonstrating interspecies yawn contagion. This contagious yawning response occurs across diverse animal groups, regardless of relatedness or domestication.

Keywords:
biobehavioral synchronycircadian rhythmsempathyhuman–animal interactionstimulus detection

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Area of Science:

  • Ethology
  • Comparative Psychology
  • Interspecies Communication

Background:

  • Contagious yawning is a well-documented phenomenon in humans and social vertebrates.
  • While typically occurring between conspecifics, some captive animals exhibit yawn contagion with humans.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether humans exhibit contagious yawning in response to non-human animal yawns.
  • To determine if phylogenetic relatedness and social closeness influence this interspecies yawn contagion.

Main Methods:

  • 296 participants completed a survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
  • Participants self-reported yawning behavior after viewing control (non-yawning) or yawning stimuli from various species (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, non-primate mammals, apes, domestic cats/dogs).

Main Results:

  • Strong evidence for interspecific yawn contagion was found.
  • No significant differences in yawn propensity or frequency were observed across different animal groups.
  • The response was consistent regardless of phylogenetic distance or domestication status.

Conclusions:

  • The mechanisms of contagious yawning can be triggered by diverse yawning stimuli, including those from unfamiliar and distantly related species.
  • Interspecies yawn contagion is a robust phenomenon, suggesting shared neurological pathways for social-induced yawning.