Does Your Dog 'Catch' Your Yawns?

There's nothing boring about today's topic of yawning!

Hello, and welcome back.

Last time I offered you some tips to help your dog sleep longer. Today, I thought we’d have a little fun with our sleep focus and talk ‘yawning’.

Yawning often happens around a state of change - such as waking or prior to falling asleep. Studies on rats showed that an increase in brain temperature can trigger yawning. And evolutionary biologist Andrew Gallup says, “there are very strong positive relationships between how long an animal yawns and how large and complex their brain is.” Gallup also noted that “research suggests that yawns are initiated alongside increases in cortical arousal, so yawns themselves may function to promote alertness.” We know in dogs, yawning may be displayed as an ‘appeasement gesture’ to reduce the chances of conflict occurring.

You’ve most likely heard - or experienced - that yawns can be contagious. The sight or sound of someone yawning is likely to elicit a yawn in return. You may even feel the need to yawn just reading this! But the jury is still out on exactly WHY this might be.

Several studies have linked contagious yawns to how empathetic a person is; other findings show that you only ‘catch’ a yawn from those you care about; there’s also research that supports yawning as a way to raise levels of alertness - so if you see another yawning to ‘wake up’ their body, you do the same in case danger is close by.

But are yawns contagious across species?

A Japanese study found that they are - and, interestingly, that dogs yawned more frequently in response to a yawn from a familiar human. This demonstrates “that the contagiousness of yawning in dogs correlated with the level of emotional proximity. Moreover, subjects’ heart rate did not differ among conditions suggesting that the phenomenon of contagious yawning in dogs is unrelated to stressful events.”

Would you like to test this out? Try yawning in front of your dog. Watch them for the next two minutes and see if they also yawn. Carry out this test as different times of the day - upon rising, during an active part of the day, and before bed.

Let us know what you find!

Did your dog yawn back at you? If so, it might just be another sign of your deep emotional connection.

Until next time, stay rested,

Caroline