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Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)

Yawning is highly contagious, yet both its proximate mechanism(s) and its ultimate causation remain poorly understood. Scholars have suggested a link between contagious yawning (CY) and sociality due to its appearance in mostly social species. Nevertheless, as findings are inconsistent, CY’s functio...

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Autores principales: van Berlo, Evy, Díaz-Loyo, Alejandra P., Juárez-Mora, Oscar E., Kret, Mariska E., Massen, Jorg J. M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7747555/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33335177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79160-x
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author van Berlo, Evy
Díaz-Loyo, Alejandra P.
Juárez-Mora, Oscar E.
Kret, Mariska E.
Massen, Jorg J. M.
author_facet van Berlo, Evy
Díaz-Loyo, Alejandra P.
Juárez-Mora, Oscar E.
Kret, Mariska E.
Massen, Jorg J. M.
author_sort van Berlo, Evy
collection PubMed
description Yawning is highly contagious, yet both its proximate mechanism(s) and its ultimate causation remain poorly understood. Scholars have suggested a link between contagious yawning (CY) and sociality due to its appearance in mostly social species. Nevertheless, as findings are inconsistent, CY’s function and evolution remains heavily debated. One way to understand the evolution of CY is by studying it in hominids. Although CY has been found in chimpanzees and bonobos, but is absent in gorillas, data on orangutans are missing despite them being the least social hominid. Orangutans are thus interesting for understanding CY’s phylogeny. Here, we experimentally tested whether orangutans yawn contagiously in response to videos of conspecifics yawning. Furthermore, we investigated whether CY was affected by familiarity with the yawning individual (i.e. a familiar or unfamiliar conspecific and a 3D orangutan avatar). In 700 trials across 8 individuals, we found that orangutans are more likely to yawn in response to yawn videos compared to control videos of conspecifics, but not to yawn videos of the avatar. Interestingly, CY occurred regardless of whether a conspecific was familiar or unfamiliar. We conclude that CY was likely already present in the last common ancestor of humans and great apes, though more converging evidence is needed.
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spelling pubmed-77475552020-12-18 Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) van Berlo, Evy Díaz-Loyo, Alejandra P. Juárez-Mora, Oscar E. Kret, Mariska E. Massen, Jorg J. M. Sci Rep Article Yawning is highly contagious, yet both its proximate mechanism(s) and its ultimate causation remain poorly understood. Scholars have suggested a link between contagious yawning (CY) and sociality due to its appearance in mostly social species. Nevertheless, as findings are inconsistent, CY’s function and evolution remains heavily debated. One way to understand the evolution of CY is by studying it in hominids. Although CY has been found in chimpanzees and bonobos, but is absent in gorillas, data on orangutans are missing despite them being the least social hominid. Orangutans are thus interesting for understanding CY’s phylogeny. Here, we experimentally tested whether orangutans yawn contagiously in response to videos of conspecifics yawning. Furthermore, we investigated whether CY was affected by familiarity with the yawning individual (i.e. a familiar or unfamiliar conspecific and a 3D orangutan avatar). In 700 trials across 8 individuals, we found that orangutans are more likely to yawn in response to yawn videos compared to control videos of conspecifics, but not to yawn videos of the avatar. Interestingly, CY occurred regardless of whether a conspecific was familiar or unfamiliar. We conclude that CY was likely already present in the last common ancestor of humans and great apes, though more converging evidence is needed. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7747555/ /pubmed/33335177 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79160-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
van Berlo, Evy
Díaz-Loyo, Alejandra P.
Juárez-Mora, Oscar E.
Kret, Mariska E.
Massen, Jorg J. M.
Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title_full Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title_fullStr Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title_full_unstemmed Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title_short Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)
title_sort experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (pongo pygmaeus)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7747555/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33335177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79160-x
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