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  • From: Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Monkeywire <monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Yawning is catching in chimps
  • Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:09:19 -0700 (PDT)

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996182

Yawning is catching in chimps

00:01 21 July 04

NewScientist.com news service

Chimpanzees yawn in response to seeing other chimps yawn, reveals a new
study. The
discovery bolsters the idea that chimps are able to understand their own and
others'
state of mind.

Catching a glimpse of a colleague yawning during an important meeting is
enough to have
most humans fighting to stifle a gape.

And the impression that yawning is "contagious" has stood up to scientific
scrutiny. When
adult humans are shown videos of yawns, around 42 to 55 per cent also begin
yawning.

Why humans do it is still controversial, although one suggestion is that it
may have
evolved as a social cue to synchronise sleep amongst a group.

Now a research team led by James Anderson at the University of Stirling in
the UK has
shown that chimpanzees also perform "contagious yawning".

Open-mouth behaviours

The team played videos of chimps either yawning or exhibiting other
open-mouth behaviours
such as grinning to six adult chimps and three infants at the Primate
Research Institute
of Kyoto University in Japan.

Two of the adults increased their yawning frequency considerably in response
to the
yawning video, while there was no difference with the others. "These data are
highly
reminiscent of the contagious yawning effects reported for human," the
authors write in
Biology Letters. They argue that their figure of 33 per cent of adults
showing contagious
yawning compares well with humans since the chimps do not understand the
purpose of the
trial.

The study is "superb" says Gordon Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist at the
State
University of New York in Albany who has worked on yawning in humans. He
believes that it
adds to evidence supporting the notion that chimps are capable of
understanding the minds
of others.

Adult infant split

In research on people, those subjects that perform contagious yawning also
recognise
images of their own faces and are better at inferring what other people are
thinking from
their faces. What is more, brain imaging studies have shown that people
watching others
yawning have more activity in parts of the brain associated with
self-information
processing.

"Our data suggest that contagious yawning is a by-product of the ability to
conceive of
yourself and to use your experience to make inferences about comparable
experiences and
mental states in others," Gallup told New Scientist.

The adult infant split is also informative. Human infants do not start to
recognise
themselves in mirrors until they are 2 years old and they also do not yawn
contagiously.

Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI 10/1098/rsbl.2004.0224)

-James Randerson








  • [monkeywire] Yawning is catching in chimps, Josh Greenman, 07/21/2004

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