What can androids and chimpanzees teach scientists about humans yawning? This is what a recent study published in Scientific Reports hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how androids yawning could trigger yawning in chimpanzees, more commonly known as contagious yawning. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the triggers of yawning in humans and other social behaviors that could be triggered by different species.
For the study, the researchers observed how 14 adult chimpanzees aged 10 and 33 years old reacted to an android’s head that produced facial expressions, including yawning. The goal of the study was to ascertain the frequency of which the chimpanzees mimicked the android depending on the extent of the yawn, and specifically to ascertain if the chimpanzees exhibited contagious yawning. In the end, the researchers found that the adult chimpanzees mimicked the android’s facial expressions almost exactly, including preparing to sleep after yawning.
“Our findings show that chimpanzees exhibit yawn contagion when triggered by a non-biological inanimate agent, a humanoid android, that looks as if it is yawning,” said Dr. Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni, who is an Honorary Research Fellow at City St George’s University of London and lead author of the study. “Despite its elusive primary functions – we still don’t know exactly why we yawn, let alone why yawning is contagious – yawning may still have an evolutionarily old, non-verbal communicative role, and its contagious aspect may help us find out more about how humans and animals developed ways of communication and social interaction.”
Going forward, the researchers note that additional research is still required to better understand contagious yawning and how this could influence human interactions, but this study marks a promising first step.
What new discoveries about contagious yawning will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Scientific Reports, EurekAlert!
