***Yawn!***

Most recent answer: 10/22/2007

Q:
Why people see others that yawn and they themselves yawn later on?
- Ming Shuan (age 10)
Tampines North Primary School, SIngapore
A:
Ming -

It may surprise you to find out that yawning is something that we don’t actually know much about. And by ’we,’ I don’t just mean the Physics Van... In fact, no one knows much about yawning. One thing we do know, though, is that it does appear to be ’contagious.’ Not just seeing other people yawn, but even thinking about it is enough to make most people yawn. In fact, just reading your question was enough to make me start yawning. (Can you read this whole answer with out starting to yawn too?)

The old theory on yawning was that it was something that we did when our brains needed extra oxygen. However, there has been a lot of research lately showing that this isn’t really true. Another fairly common theory is that yawning is a way of showing that you’re bored, although there are a number of examples showing that this isn’t always true either. The only theory that I know of as to why yawning is so ’contagious,’ is that we evolved the tendency to yawn as a way for one person to signal others that they were about to change from one activity to another. Unfortunately, none of these guesses have any solid proof, so there’s really nothing that can be said for certain.

If you’d like more information on yawning, check out HowStuffWorks.com’s . They also have links to lots of good pages on the same question.

-Tamara

(published on 10/22/2007)