Thursday, August 08, 2013

*Yawn*



New research out of the University of Tokyo shows that contagious yawning in dogs is emotionally connected in a way similar to humans and not as a distress response, as previously thought.

Dogs Yawn In Response To Owners' Yawns

Fascinating.


[The BLOG note: The above pic is one of our beloved German Shepherd, Dax , who wasn't really yawning at the time, but any excuse to see her again was a good enough excuse for me to use her photo for this post.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's beautiful.

Is she giving her orders for the day for her minions to carry out?

cube said...

Dax was beautiful outside and inside. She was a very good girl and we all still miss her since her passing in 2008.

Lol. We WERE her minions, but in this photo she was happily chewing on a seed from a sweet gum tree. We jokingly called them "balls of death" because they start out green and soft, but dry into hard, spiky balls that if you ever stepped on one... well, you'd know why we called them "BOD".

Dax loved to chew on them.

sue hanes said...


Cube - I'm sorry about the passing of Dax. I had never heard that about dogs' yawning.

I did read that when someone yawns it is most likely to trigger a yawn in someone who is generally a follower anyway. I'm afraid I fit in that category. I like to think of myself as independent but I do find that I yawn when someone else does.

I can see why a dog would yawn if he saw his master doing it.