Yawning in Dogs and People

Two studies mentioned in an article in the Irish Independent (here) show that dogs can be triggered to yawn by people in the same way that people find yawning contagious. Apparently, this is particularly the case where the yawner is the dog’s owner.  The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that dogs can show empathy with people, however, this is disputed by others who point out that it could just be a case of overlapping behaviours that dogs and people share.

Whether it can be called “empathy” or not, it does highlight the closeness of our two species’ relationship, although we are already well aware of that, but what interests me is how this might relate to dogs living in different situations. Where I live in Bangkok, dogs can have very different lifestyles which clearly affect their behaviour, particularly towards people. There are pets, pets on the loose, unowned street dogs with a close relationship to certain people, unowned street dogs familiar with people but without a close relationship to individuals, temple dogs, and what I call the feral dogs who largely scavenge for themselves and are more wary of people. These are all mixed together and hard to classify because it is more of a continuum than fixed categories but this continuum is mainly based on how close a relationship the dog has to people.

What I am wondering is whether this yawning research fits along the continuum of dog lifestyle that I have observed in Bangkok. If so, then I would expect human yawning to be most contagious to pet dogs and least to the feral dogs. I might do my own informal study of how easily I can trigger different dogs to yawn.

I anticipate that my apparent chronic fatigue will elicit some degree of sympathy (maybe even empathy) from passersby.

Another angle would be to look at how many owners can be triggered to yawn by their dog yawning, which may say something about that particular relationship given that it is usually the socially less dominant who catches the yawn from the more dominant. 

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)