<p>Contagious yawning occurs not only in some mammals but also between members of a bird species, a new study has found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Contagious yawning was previously thought only to occur between humans, domestic dogs, chimpanzees and a type of rodent aptly called the high-yawning Sprague-Dawley rat.<br /><br />"To date, this is the first experimental evidence of contagious yawning in a non-mammalian species," said study leader Andrew Gallup of State University of New York in the US.<br /><br />The findings that contagious yawning occurs between budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), also known as parakeets, in a controlled laboratory setting corroborate a previous observation of the same thing happening in a flock of these social parrots.<br /><br />In the wild, these birds form lasting bonds within breeding pairs and interact within coordinated flocks throughout the year.<br /><br />In a laboratory setting, budgies are known to automatically imitate video stimuli shown to them.<br /><br />Gallup's team conducted two experiments. In the first, 16 birds were paired in adjacent cages with and without barriers blocking their view.<br />If contagious, yawns should be clustered in time only when the birds can see another. In the second experiment, the same birds were shown separate video clips of a budgie yawning and not yawning.<br />Yawning was found to occur three times as often within a five-minute window when the birds could see one another than when their view was blocked from the other bird.<br />When they were viewing video clips of another budgie yawning, yawns occurred twice as often. This response was not the result of stress or anxiety.<br /><br />The researchers believe that contagious yawning is more than just an involuntary action, but is rather a primitive form of showing empathy.<br /><br />It has for instance been found that it is more common among people who are deemed to be more empathic.<br /><br />Thanks to a process called emotional contagion or state matching, contagious yawning occurs when a person thinks about or senses someone else carrying out this somewhat drowsy action.<br /><br />Birds are known to have certain emphatic responses. Gallup therefore proposes that since contagious yawns can be experimentally manipulated, budgies could be used as a good model to explore other primitive forms of empathic processing in birds.<br /><br />The research was published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition.</p>
<p>Contagious yawning occurs not only in some mammals but also between members of a bird species, a new study has found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Contagious yawning was previously thought only to occur between humans, domestic dogs, chimpanzees and a type of rodent aptly called the high-yawning Sprague-Dawley rat.<br /><br />"To date, this is the first experimental evidence of contagious yawning in a non-mammalian species," said study leader Andrew Gallup of State University of New York in the US.<br /><br />The findings that contagious yawning occurs between budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), also known as parakeets, in a controlled laboratory setting corroborate a previous observation of the same thing happening in a flock of these social parrots.<br /><br />In the wild, these birds form lasting bonds within breeding pairs and interact within coordinated flocks throughout the year.<br /><br />In a laboratory setting, budgies are known to automatically imitate video stimuli shown to them.<br /><br />Gallup's team conducted two experiments. In the first, 16 birds were paired in adjacent cages with and without barriers blocking their view.<br />If contagious, yawns should be clustered in time only when the birds can see another. In the second experiment, the same birds were shown separate video clips of a budgie yawning and not yawning.<br />Yawning was found to occur three times as often within a five-minute window when the birds could see one another than when their view was blocked from the other bird.<br />When they were viewing video clips of another budgie yawning, yawns occurred twice as often. This response was not the result of stress or anxiety.<br /><br />The researchers believe that contagious yawning is more than just an involuntary action, but is rather a primitive form of showing empathy.<br /><br />It has for instance been found that it is more common among people who are deemed to be more empathic.<br /><br />Thanks to a process called emotional contagion or state matching, contagious yawning occurs when a person thinks about or senses someone else carrying out this somewhat drowsy action.<br /><br />Birds are known to have certain emphatic responses. Gallup therefore proposes that since contagious yawns can be experimentally manipulated, budgies could be used as a good model to explore other primitive forms of empathic processing in birds.<br /><br />The research was published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition.</p>