A new study has reported its findings from a rather curious experiment: getting a bunch of chimpanzees to watch a disembodied android head yawning. The results revealed that the head, both alien and familiar in its appearance, had the capacity to make them yawn and even start gathering bedding materials. The findings reveal new insights into the science of contagious yawning , and what makes them so damn infectious.

There are several theories as to what drives contagious yawning , from increasing alertness to empathy. We’ve seen it occur between species, but questions still remain as to what its key drivers are.

“The contagiousness of yawning is also presumed to be reliant on neuronal activation of paths where we know mirror neurons are activated when observation of biological moti

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