Dogs / Behaviour
Contagious yawning — the phenomenon where seeing someone yawn triggers your own yawn — was long thought to be uniquely human or, at most, shared with great apes.
Contagious yawning — the phenomenon where seeing someone yawn triggers your own yawn — was long thought to be uniquely human or, at most, shared with great apes.
Research has confirmed that dogs also exhibit contagious yawning, and they are more likely to "catch" a yawn from their owner than from a stranger.
Why this matters: Contagious yawning in humans is linked to empathy and emotional attunement — the ability to unconsciously mirror another's state. The fact that dogs show this preferentially with their bonded humans suggests a form of emotional contagion that is remarkably sophisticated for a non-primate species.
It is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence that the dog-human bond involves genuine emotional synchronisation, not just learned behaviour.
Article content © Ravi Teja. All rights reserved.
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