According to the Buenos Aires Economic News Network in Argentina on April 19, research shows that yawning is not a unique behavior of humans, and canines can also be "contagious" by human yawning.
Many people ask, "Does human yawn really contagious to dogs?" The answer given by science is: "Some dog owners say with confidence that when they yawn, their dogs yawn too. They may be right."
In humans, infectious yawning is a well-known phenomenon: when we see, hear, and even sometimes think of yawning, many people yawn. Studies have shown that some canine animals can also yawn infectiously.
studies show that unlike wolves, members of wolves are infected with each other and yawning, while dogs are more likely to respond to humans and yawning. One study shows that canines yawn even when they hear recordings of human yawning.
Research believes that when dog companions see or hear humans yawn, they will yawn infectious yawns, but it is not clear why both humans and animals yawn themselves when other companions yawn. In fact, the more important question is what this behavior means.
Brian Hale, director of the Duke University Canine Cognition Center, asked: "Is there a social connection between me and my dog? How does my dog feel about me? Do my dog feel the same way I do?" In humans, contagious yawning is considered a "symptom of empathy." However, whether contagious yawning can prove the connection between people and pets has been controversial. A 2013 study found that dogs yawn twice as often after seeing familiar people yawn than strangers yawn, suggesting that there may be a social bond related to empathy behind yawning.
But other studies have failed to prove this connection. Analyzing 257 dogs in 2020 concluded that there is no evidence that infectious yawning in dogs is associated with familiarity or empathy bias. "Although the predictions are very intuitive, the direct link between infectious yawning and empathy is not supported by strong arguments," said Andrew Gallup, a psychology professor at the State University of New York Polytechnic. But this does not mean that infectious yawning in dogs has nothing to do with empathy. "We just can't prove this convincingly yet," he said.
Studying canine yawning is challenging because the reason why they yawn may not be related to watching human yawning, and it is likely that it is just spontaneous yawning. yawning can also be a manifestation of stress, and it will be even more obvious when watching whether a dog yawns through video in the experiment.
Like humans, some pets may just yawn more or less frequently than others. Although research shows that dogs are likely to be infected and yawned when they see or hear humans yawn, there is no consensus in the scientific community as to what this means.