According to experts, the phenomenon of contagious yawning that occurs in humans may also affect our canine friends.
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In humans, contagious yawning has been considered “a hallmark of empathy,” according to Laurie Santos, director of the Canine Cognition Center at Yale University. In dogs, a 2012 study showed that they even yawn when they hear a recording of humans yawning.
A 2013 study found that dogs yawned twice as often after seeing humans yawning. However, this phenomenon was only observed when the canines saw familiar humans yawning, suggesting that this only occurs based on a social bond.
But other research, such as a 2020 study analyzing data from 257 dogs, found insufficient evidence to suggest that the phenomenon of contagious yawning is associated with a familiarity bias or empathy.
“There’s just no strong support for a direct connection between contagious yawning and empathy, despite the fact that the predictions are very intuitive,” said Andrew Gallup, professor of psychology at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, to The Washington Post.
However, that doesn’t mean that contagious yawning in dogs isn’t related to empathy. “We just haven’t been able to demonstrate it in a convincing way,” explained Brian Hare, director of the Duke University’s Canine Cognition Center, to The Washington Post.
This is because a dog may yawn for reasons unrelated to seeing a human yawn. Besides spontaneous yawning, for example, yawning in dogs can also be a sign of stress.
According to Monique Udell, director of the Human-Animal Interaction Laboratory at Oregon State University, this stress can be heightened during laboratory experiments where canines are filmed to see if they will yawn.
So dogs may yawn contagiously when they see or hear humans yawning, according to some research, but there is no scientific consensus on what this truly means.
This content was created with the help of AI.
