Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger. I've got to come clean. I like dogs.
Speaker 1: In fact, I own to My dog, Winchester does this
Speaker 1: thing whenever I get home from work, where he's super
Speaker 1: excited and he's jumping around all happy, and then he
Speaker 1: starts yawning for some reason. I don't know. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: just tired, or maybe he's waking up. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but he seems pretty delighted. And yawning is one of
Speaker 1: the primary ways dogs communicate in their whole complicated system
Speaker 1: of subtle body language. It could mean several things. Did
Speaker 1: you know that yawning is actually the first expression dogs
Speaker 1: learn to use when they're tiny puppies, so it has
Speaker 1: multiple meanings depending on the situation a dog is in.
Speaker 1: Dogs usually yawn when they want to send a pacifying
Speaker 1: or calming signal out to other dogs or people, like hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: let's take a breathe there and just chill out, okay.
Speaker 1: Yawns have no element of fear or aggression for dogs.
Speaker 1: It's like the exact opposite of a threat. So imagine this.
Speaker 1: You're in a fistfight, and all you have to do
Speaker 1: is just be like, yeawn, nothing dangerous or intimidating here,
Speaker 1: just I'm I'm like bored. But wait, why would my
Speaker 1: dog do that to me? Okay, sometimes dogs yawn when
Speaker 1: they're getting obedience training. If a dog is frustrated, he
Speaker 1: might be asking you to give him a little break.
Speaker 1: That is, if he sees you as the dominant one
Speaker 1: in your relationship. It could also mean that your dog
Speaker 1: might be just cooling off his brain. There's a veterinary
Speaker 1: behaviorist at you see Davis that thinks dog brains get
Speaker 1: hot during periods of inactivity. Dog brains get warm because
Speaker 1: their circulation slows down, So yawning supposedly cools the arterial
Speaker 1: blood down, helping the dog's brain function. There's one other
Speaker 1: thing that yawning and dogs might mean. Dogs also yawn
Speaker 1: when they're dealing with anxiety or uncertainty, and this includes
Speaker 1: being excited. So maybe my dog is just trying to
Speaker 1: control his enthusiasm. And oh also dogs yawn when they're
Speaker 1: nervous too, like in a vets office, do you yawn
Speaker 1: when you're nervous? Check this out. Dogs can also catch
Speaker 1: yawning from the human beings around them. You know how
Speaker 1: if you yawn, then other people in the room around
Speaker 1: you often start yawning. Well, that often has to do
Speaker 1: with a person's capacity for empathy, you know, feeling what
Speaker 1: somebody else feels. Well, there was a study about this
Speaker 1: that was published in a journal called Biology Letters in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and they said twenty one out
Speaker 1: of twenty nine dogs yawned at least once in response
Speaker 1: to the yawn of an assistant in the room with them.
Speaker 1: Human to dog yawn contagion. It sounds like the beginning
Speaker 1: of a zombie movie where everyone just yawns at each other.
Speaker 1: Check out the Brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.