Why We Yawn

Nearly every vertebrate on earth yawns. When it comes to human yawning, though, it's often connected to a detached attitude toward something. In boring situations like that dead end job or those lengthy lectures in College, yawning comes easy. It doesn't necessarily imply being tired, discontent, detached or disinterested. Instead, there may be more behind the strange deep breath and prying jaw movement than we thought. So why do we really yawn?

At first scientists declared the body makes itself yawn when it is low on oxygen. This idea was dissolved after experiments with control groups when people exposed to deprived or extra oxygen did not exhibit any change in yawning behavior. Yawning has also been recorded in fetuses which contradicts the low-oxygen theory since womb bound babies do not breathe through their lungs. Another hypothesis suggested the brain yawns in an attempt wake itself up from groggy perception, but this idea hasn't been proven and is not likely considering how Olympic athletes yawn before competitions.

In Greek, Mayan and other superstitious mythological cultures yawning is seen as the soul's attempt to escape the body and join the Gods or that yawning is the devil's route to enter the body. Typically, in places over seas, yawning is a rude gesture that signifies disinterest and disrespect. Putting a hand over the mouth during Pandiculation, or yawning, is common practice even here in the states. A separate superstition may be responsible for this almost automatic response. Wikipedia's information cites:

"Counting a person's teeth robs them of one year of life for every tooth counted. This is why some people cover their mouths when they laugh, smile, or yawn."

Another idea suggests that yawning is an age old instinct to signal sleepiness to other tribe members in order to help develop consistent sleep and wake cycles. This might explain why seeing someone yawn can make us tired, or yawn ourselves. It's probable that yawning is an ancestral instinct, but its purpose in human communication is still unknown.

One practical explanation can be found in symptoms to a possible heart condition that causes excessive yawning. This is a warning sign toward a vasovagal reaction that could lead to a heart attack. In this way, yawning may be a way to flume blood flow better to the brain and other parts of the body. It's possible that yawning is a way to raise body temperature by helping blood flow more freely. This may explain why cats, humans and dogs stretch and yawn the most in the morning.

Other recent ideas insist that brain chemicals like dopamine and serotonin are released during yawns. People using anti-depressant medications such as Paxil or Prozac are often noticed to yawn abnormally often. Since these medications help contribute to serotonin and dopamine production in the patient, the correlation makes sense. In one particular depression fighting pill, Anafranil, five percent of patients using the medication experience full fledged orgasms when yawning. Here yawns may be an involuntary reaction to the brain distributing vital chemicals throughout the body. On the same note, yawning is often attributed to other emotional responses such as crying or laughing and is possibly a means to simply vent certain feelings from the body.

We've all also noticed how strangely contagious yawning can be. The reason behind it is unclear, but it's estimated that 40-60% of the population are susceptible to yawning from reading the word, hearing it spoken or seeing it done. Human beings aren't the only creatures vulnerable to the yawn bug. The strange affliction occurs in chimpanzees, and many mammals. Dogs can be enticed to yawn after seeing a human being do it, although the contagious yawn phenomenon is most prevalent in same-species groups. This has been attributed to the imitating way many mammals learn and yawning can be a impulse brought on my mirrored neurons in the frontal cortex. In this way yawning is a kind of unconscious recognition among developed mammals.

In some other species yawning plays a more defined role. Penguins yawn as a mating ritual while chimpanzees yawn to expose their teeth to warn or challenge other chimps in the group hierarchy. This tendency is also seen in wolves and their moon light howling.

Considering how frequent a role yawning plays in our day to day lives it would seem to be a surprise that hardly anything concrete is known about it. Most likely, science will continue to prove and disprove away the phenomena all animals experience, consciously or not. The typically unnoticed mystery is a testament to how the most common occurrences can yield the greatest questions. It wouldn't be a long shot to say that mind will be the last frontier for man to conquer.