A new study has thrown up some exciting new findings (don't they all!). It's been a well known fact for years now that yawning in humans is infectious, and now it seems our canine friends have caught the bug as well.
Fresh research from Birbeck College at the University of London has unveiled that dogs too can follow the human yawning 'cue'.
Science bods tested 29 dogs by creating two conditions, each five minutes long, in which a person - unknown to the dog - was sat in front of it and asked to call its name. For the first test, the stranger yawned once the dogs had made eye contact with them.
"We gave the dogs everything: visual and auditory stimulus to induce them to yawn," Birkbeck's Dr Atsushi Senju said.
The same procedure was followed in the second test, but this time the stranger opened and closed their mouth without yawning - a method of ensuring that dogs weren't just responding to an open mouth.
In the study, the team found that 21 out of 29 dogs yawned when the stranger in front of them had first. Perhaps more relevant is the fact no dogs yawned during the test where the person did not yawn.
It seems, then, that man's best friend is much closer to us than we ever previously thought...
You can login to your account or create a new account.