-- Mary Elizabeth Dallas
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) -- If you're yawning from
fatigue or boredom, your loyal dog is likely yawning as well, a new
But this isn't the case with puppies of 7 months or younger, who
may not have developed empathy yet. (And they're far too busy
chewing up shoes or jumping on the furniture.)
Researchers in Sweden explained that dogs, like humans,
gradually become susceptible to yawns as they get older. They noted
that contagious yawning is a sign of empathy, as well as a response
to being tired or bored.
The researchers, led by Elainie Alenkaer Madsen and Tomas
Persson at Lund University, observed the response of 35 dogs
between 4 and 14 months old during play and cuddling when a human
repeatedly yawned, gaped or did neither.
The final analysis only included 32 dogs. "Three dogs were
excluded from analyses, due to, respectively, distractions,
over-excitedness and poor owner yawning," the researchers
Dogs older than 7 months showed signs of contagious yawning. The
study also showed that roughly half the dogs became tired
themselves, so much so that some dogs needed to be prevented from
falling asleep. The researchers concluded that empathy slowly
develops over the first year of a dog's life.
Children also typically start to yawn contagiously at the age of
4 years, when their ability to accurately identify other people's
emotions is more developed. Unlike humans and other primates,
however, adult dogs do not respond differently to strangers and are
just as likely to catch yawns from people they don't know very
The study was published online Oct. 17 in the journal
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