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Dogs Can 'Catch' Our Yawns: New Study Reveals
A recent study by the University of Tokyo has found dogs can ‘catch’ human yawns. This has major implications for the human-dog bond, as it suggests what owners have long expected – that dogs can feel what they feel.
Scientists are fascinated by yawning. The function and reason behind the development of the humble yawn is still fiercely debated. It is however likely linked to social cohesion, synchronizing sleeping patterns in ancient human groups, thus facilitating communal behavior. It is known yawning springs from the same part of the brain responsible for understanding and identification with the feelings of others.
‘Contagious yawning’ as it is known, is when one person yawns after seeing, or hearing, another person yawning. It has been proven to be associated with our ability to understand and interpret other’s emotions and is therefore of considerable interest to scientist’s studying empathic responses in humans and animals. Contagious yawning has been recorded in humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and baboons – all social primates – but it has never been substantially recorded crossing the species barrier. That is, until now.
Scientists were aware previously dogs occasionally yawned in apparent response to humans yawning, but they weren’t sure why or if it was just coincidence. It may have been a sign of emotional connection, or a stress response, as dogs often yawn when they are anxious.
In order to study the behavior, researchers from the University of Tokyo gathered together 25 dogs, their owners, and a number of randomly collected volunteers. Each dog was observed whilst the scientists had their owner yawn at them, then a stranger. These yawns were both fake and genuine.
The results were surprising. Not only did the dogs respond to the yawning humans by doing so themselves, they also yawned far more when their owners were yawning than strangers. This suggests the yawning behavior was indeed mediated by emotional connection. The pets were also able to tell if a yawn was genuine or not, being more likely to react to the former, further supporting the theory dogs are ‘contagious yawners’.
In an interesting parallel, scientists discovered recently people are more likely to respond to the yawns of loved ones than other people.
Telemetric measures were taken of the dogs’ heart rate throughout the course of the experiment to determine if anxiety was at all at play. The idea was ruled out by the test. Their heart rates remained stable, proving it was empathy, not nervous arousal, which caused the dogs to pull sleepy faces.
The effect could possibly be linked to the domestication process where dogs who developed mental processes to better connect to their human masters were selectively bred.
Feature image credit
Scientists are fascinated by yawning. The function and reason behind the development of the humble yawn is still fiercely debated. It is however likely linked to social cohesion, synchronizing sleeping patterns in ancient human groups, thus facilitating communal behavior. It is known yawning springs from the same part of the brain responsible for understanding and identification with the feelings of others.
‘Contagious yawning’ as it is known, is when one person yawns after seeing, or hearing, another person yawning. It has been proven to be associated with our ability to understand and interpret other’s emotions and is therefore of considerable interest to scientist’s studying empathic responses in humans and animals. Contagious yawning has been recorded in humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and baboons – all social primates – but it has never been substantially recorded crossing the species barrier. That is, until now.
Scientists were aware previously dogs occasionally yawned in apparent response to humans yawning, but they weren’t sure why or if it was just coincidence. It may have been a sign of emotional connection, or a stress response, as dogs often yawn when they are anxious.
In order to study the behavior, researchers from the University of Tokyo gathered together 25 dogs, their owners, and a number of randomly collected volunteers. Each dog was observed whilst the scientists had their owner yawn at them, then a stranger. These yawns were both fake and genuine.
The results were surprising. Not only did the dogs respond to the yawning humans by doing so themselves, they also yawned far more when their owners were yawning than strangers. This suggests the yawning behavior was indeed mediated by emotional connection. The pets were also able to tell if a yawn was genuine or not, being more likely to react to the former, further supporting the theory dogs are ‘contagious yawners’.
In an interesting parallel, scientists discovered recently people are more likely to respond to the yawns of loved ones than other people.
Telemetric measures were taken of the dogs’ heart rate throughout the course of the experiment to determine if anxiety was at all at play. The idea was ruled out by the test. Their heart rates remained stable, proving it was empathy, not nervous arousal, which caused the dogs to pull sleepy faces.
The effect could possibly be linked to the domestication process where dogs who developed mental processes to better connect to their human masters were selectively bred.
Feature image credit
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