Contagious yawning has fascinated scientists for decades. We know that there are in many species – mammals, birds, certain fish – and that it can even cross barriers between species. Dogs “catch” our yawns, just like chimpanzees. But so far, all the tests had been carried out with living beings or videos. Never with a robot in flesh and … silicone.
Researchers from City St George’s University of London and the University of Girona have taken the plunge. They designed a hyperrealistic Android head to test fourteen chimpanzees from the Fundació Mona sanctuary, in Spain. Their protocol? Three different facial expressions presented for ten seconds each. A full mouth -wide yawn, a simple partial opening, and a closed neutral position. Primates, aged 10 to 33, observed these demonstrations to see if they were going to react.
First teaching? The chimpanzees did react. Their reaction has proven to be perfectly graduated according to the opening of the android mouth. The more it was, the more they yawned in return. The complete yawning won the highest contagion rate, the partial opening a less response, the neutral position nothing at all. The contagion therefore works even with an artificial agent, a first scientist.
More than just contagion
But the researchers discovered something much more disturbing. Only complete yawns sparked surprising behavior in the chimpanzees, who then began to gather materials to build their nest before lengthening. This rest preparation ritual only appeared after seeing the yawn android “for real”, never during other demonstrations.
This observation changes everything. “”Our results show that chimpanzees react to an artificial agent who seems to yawn“Explains Dr. Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni, honorary researcher at City St George’s University of London and the main study of the study, in a press release. But above all, it reveals that the yawning could work as a primitive signal, a message”It’s time to rest“That the primates would have decoded and followed.
Because this is the upheaval. The contagious yawn would not be just an automatic imitation, a reflex of mimicry. It would bring specific behavioral information. Seeing someone yawn would trigger not only the desire to yawn, but also that of preparing for rest.
This discovery sheds new light on our understanding of primitive communication. “”We still don’t know exactly why we gag, nor why it’s contagious“, Admits Dr. Joly-Mascheroni.”But yawning could have a very old non -verbal communicative role“.
The study now opens up multiple tracks. Scientists want to know if other behaviors can be “transmitted” between robots and animals, and to what extent our own reactions resemble those of chimpanzees. More broadly, this interdisciplinary research, where psychology, robotics and zoology meet, could revolutionize our understanding of primitive social mechanisms.
Because beyond the anecdote, this experience raises a fundamental question: what if our most automatic behaviors actually carry messages that we have forgotten? The yawn could be only one example among others of a much richer communication system than we imagined.