The Art of Yawning

I yawned twice a few minutes ago and it got me wondered why do we yawn. I mean, besides the fact that it is 1AM in the morning. In Wikipedia, it says that yawning is associated with tiredness, stress, overwork, lack of stimulation, or boredom. (Source: Wikipedia)

That explains it, sometimes I yawn in the morning after 8 hours of sleeping - a nice 8 hours of sleeping; maybe I was lack of stimulation in the morning. In fact, I see my family and even my partner waking up, yawn and stretch at the same time, which is called “pandiculation”. (Source: The Free Dictionary)


Now, lets see the some of the art of yawning in action:

“Mom has been singing the same lullaby again…”


What a polite little seal pup.


If those hounds doesn’t find me yet, I’ll be bored to death.


It comes to show that even reptiles yawn too.


Now, this is really amazing, a 13 week old fetus yawned and got caught in a camera. Incredible!

It is said that yawning is very contagious, exactly like this picture:

To see how true is the level of contagiousness, check out this video from Mythbuster.

There are a lot of questions “why” do we actually yawn and so far, no one can really give a precise answer as yet. But whatever it is, yawning is a natural art and biological functions of the body, so we should be proud to have this function because it is one of the best expressions for human. And a study in 2007 shows that yawning may actually help boost brain’s alertness.

For more interesting articles on yawning, check out these websites:
How Stuff Works
Discovery Channel
Kidshealth