Yawns are not, it turns out, signs of boredom. They serve a real physiological need. Speakers, lecturers, sermonizers take heart. Your audience is paying attention. Well, maybe.
Yawning. We do it rather more frequently than I reckoned before I read of a study conducted by Jorg J. M. Massen et al. * Yep.
Y A W N N N N N N N N. I can see you opening your mouth now. Not to worry. Just shows you have a big brain with lots of cortical/pallial neurons. Massen and eleven friends related brain size to yawn duration. Took a dozen people to solve that ancient problem and frame it in the language of science: Yawning, they say, is “a thermoregulatory adaptation…conserved across amniotic evolution.” Yawning cools the brain. Longer yawns mean greater cooling. And metabolism doesn’t seem to be involved. That is, a bird with a very fast heart rate does not yawn as long as a similarly sized mammal. Bird brain, you know. What’s that they say? “Size matters.” Seems that the most lethargic couch potato yawns not because he’s a human blob, but rather because he has a big brain. Go ahead, yawn while you binge watch your favorite TV series, just don’t choke on the potato chips if you yawn while you munch.
Yawning birds? Sorry missed that over the course of my life, but then, I’m neither ornithologist nor birder. But I have seen birds. Heck, the local town boasts of being a “bird sanctuary,” and turkeys, turkey vultures, hawks, crows, woodpeckers, an occasional blue heron, sundry song birds, and hummingbirds visit the woods and stream on my property. I’d watch more closely, but I think I’d yawn. I’m not, as I just said, a birder.
But in missing bird yawns, I demonstrate how little I have observed about the world. Caught up in the concerns of my “big brain,” I’ve missed details that might have made life even more interesting than I’ve discovered it to be. I’ve been fascinated, but I could have been more fascinated. I’ve tried to see “the big picture,” but in doing so, I’ve missed the very details that would give the big picture a better resolution. I’ve been looking in HD, but not in ultra-HD. And in missing the detail of yawning birds, I guess I missed seeing how related I am to so many other life-forms “across amniotic evolution.”
So, I’m not going to suggest that a dozen scientists wasted their time timing yawns. I’m happy I now know that my yawns and yours last longer than those of smaller-brained organisms. And the next time I see a dog yawn or a person yawn during a talk, I’ll see the yawn from a new perspective. Maybe we aren’t bored. Maybe we just have hot brains that need to be cooled. Maybe the next time I’m talking and someone yawns, I’ll not jump to the conclusion that the person is neither interested in what I have to say nor bored by my delivery, but rather is hot and that many cortical/pallial neurons need to be cooled. Y A W N N N N N N.
Note:
*Massen, J. M., Hartlieb, M., Martin, J.S. et al. Brain size and neuron numbers drive differences in yawn duration across mammals and birds. Commun Biol 4, 503 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02019-y
Yawning. We do it rather more frequently than I reckoned before I read of a study conducted by Jorg J. M. Massen et al. * Yep.
Y A W N N N N N N N N. I can see you opening your mouth now. Not to worry. Just shows you have a big brain with lots of cortical/pallial neurons. Massen and eleven friends related brain size to yawn duration. Took a dozen people to solve that ancient problem and frame it in the language of science: Yawning, they say, is “a thermoregulatory adaptation…conserved across amniotic evolution.” Yawning cools the brain. Longer yawns mean greater cooling. And metabolism doesn’t seem to be involved. That is, a bird with a very fast heart rate does not yawn as long as a similarly sized mammal. Bird brain, you know. What’s that they say? “Size matters.” Seems that the most lethargic couch potato yawns not because he’s a human blob, but rather because he has a big brain. Go ahead, yawn while you binge watch your favorite TV series, just don’t choke on the potato chips if you yawn while you munch.
Yawning birds? Sorry missed that over the course of my life, but then, I’m neither ornithologist nor birder. But I have seen birds. Heck, the local town boasts of being a “bird sanctuary,” and turkeys, turkey vultures, hawks, crows, woodpeckers, an occasional blue heron, sundry song birds, and hummingbirds visit the woods and stream on my property. I’d watch more closely, but I think I’d yawn. I’m not, as I just said, a birder.
But in missing bird yawns, I demonstrate how little I have observed about the world. Caught up in the concerns of my “big brain,” I’ve missed details that might have made life even more interesting than I’ve discovered it to be. I’ve been fascinated, but I could have been more fascinated. I’ve tried to see “the big picture,” but in doing so, I’ve missed the very details that would give the big picture a better resolution. I’ve been looking in HD, but not in ultra-HD. And in missing the detail of yawning birds, I guess I missed seeing how related I am to so many other life-forms “across amniotic evolution.”
So, I’m not going to suggest that a dozen scientists wasted their time timing yawns. I’m happy I now know that my yawns and yours last longer than those of smaller-brained organisms. And the next time I see a dog yawn or a person yawn during a talk, I’ll see the yawn from a new perspective. Maybe we aren’t bored. Maybe we just have hot brains that need to be cooled. Maybe the next time I’m talking and someone yawns, I’ll not jump to the conclusion that the person is neither interested in what I have to say nor bored by my delivery, but rather is hot and that many cortical/pallial neurons need to be cooled. Y A W N N N N N N.
Note:
*Massen, J. M., Hartlieb, M., Martin, J.S. et al. Brain size and neuron numbers drive differences in yawn duration across mammals and birds. Commun Biol 4, 503 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02019-y
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