what's with yawning that makes it so contagious?

you are right about the reasons for yawning but I do not know why it is contagious but I am doing it now because you mentioned it.

I don't know but it is true, when you see someone doing it you do it too. LOL

psychologists would have us believe that we yawn in response to someone else doing it simply because yawning is an automatic response to oxygen becoming short. Therefore, seeing someone yawn therefore threatens us subconsciously and we yawn out of self defence blessed be

maybe these happen due to heavey work and tensions and then they want to take some relax and so take so rest in that rest they will yawning to side of them after that u will also get some sleep and u will also yawn to them and some people donot like that so they will try to neglect them and i always try to neglect that type of people i donot like them!

I've always wondered this myself. I know it's true that they are contagious because of the many "yawning games" my friends and I used to play. I don't know why they are, though. Maybe it's just a case of "Monkey See, Monkey Do"?

Hi Rojane, I have got this information from one of my book. It stated that the proximate cause for contagious yawning may lie with mirror neurons, i.e. neurons in the frontal cortex of certain vertebrates, which upon being exposed to a stimuls from conspecific (same species) and occasionally interspecific organisms, activates the same regions in the brain. Mirror neurons have been proposed as a driving force for imitationwhich lies at the root of much human learning, e.g. language acquisition. Yawning may be an offshoot of the same imitative impulse. That's what the book explained.

I think it's like this! Everyone is tired, so when you yawn, it just reminds them how tired they are, so they yawn! Makes sense? I don't believe it either! I actually haven't learned why! Take care Rojane.

This is not just in people, but in animals too. I noticed often when one Animal is nervous another animal will yawn at it to tell the other animal to relax. I think this in turn triggers people and other animals to yawn not only to help increase oxygen to our brain, but to help us naturally comfort and calm eachother down, when in a stresfull situation... - DNatureofDTrain

Since people yawn coz they need more oxygen, maybe when they take in that extra oxygen, the person opposite them needs it. Coz all the oxygen around is sued up by the yawning person. So to make up for it we yawn too to get our fair share of the oxygen..hehe. I know it sounds weird but its one of those mysteries that can never be solved.

When one witnesses someone else yawning, one has a mostly unconscious urge to yawn. People may become conscious of the urge, but scientists suggest the beginning of the yearn to yawn is unconscious. This means that the signal to yawn must bypass a response called the mirror neuron system, which would render yawning in response to someone else a conscious and imitative act. Scientists have often, in the past, suggested that the mirror neuron system causes yawning. Other explanations for why yawning seems contagious include the idea that yawning may have evolved in early man as a way to signal or set up sleep schedules. A contagious yawn meant that perhaps more than one person was tired and people should sleep accordingly. Since tiredness might indicate a less energetic response to danger, clearly, yawning would mean people should find shelter and get out of danger. Those who yawned and paid attention to it, may have been selected into the species because they got proper sleep and were more alert to danger.

hehe..i really dunno,, i have also noticed its contagious..kinda magic right??

i never thought of that before. maybe it's our mind that triggers the 'button'. when we see people yawn, the msg go to the brain and so on. in the end - we yawn out of the blue...lol

really? is that really contagious? i yawn a lot coz i lack sleep. i better get a full rest now. nice topic