Research work "yawning as a physiological process." Why do we yawn
Yawning is one of the most mysterious processes in the body. As you know, not only people, but also most mammals can yawn.
At the same time, yawning no longer occurs in birds and reptiles - completely different reasons force them to open their mouths wide.
How does the yawning process occur?
It has not been reliably established what the mechanism of yawning is, however, through many years of observation, quite a lot of interesting facts have been established. Firstly, you need to immediately indicate what it is reflex process– that is, yawning occurs involuntarily.
The mouth opens wide, the lungs expand, a deep inhalation occurs, followed by a short sharp exhalation. Many people make a specific “yawning” sound.
Yawning is inherent in a person from the first days of life, but not everyone knows that even an unborn fetus does this while in the mother’s womb.
Yawning is extremely contagious, as many of us have experienced. own experience: as soon as one of the group of people yawns, the majority immediately takes up this initiative.
Scientists believe that in this way it is possible to identify people who are prone to sympathy and empathy.
Yawning and our smaller brothers
Animals also begin to yawn literally from the first hours after birth. Dogs and monkeys, bears, horses and rabbits can yawn. 
In general, yawning is somehow connected with brain development - animals that cannot boast high level intellectuals, as a rule, do not know how to yawn. But predators yawn not only before going to bed, but also when they see prey. In many animals, a wide yawn is a kind of greeting to a met opponent: an open mouth allows you to demonstrate the entire set of teeth.
Versions of the causes of yawning
It is widely believed that people yawn:
- when you just woke up;
- when they are bored and have nothing to do.
But what motivates us to open our mouths wide and inhale a huge portion of air? Here are the versions the scientific world offers on this matter.
1. Yawning occurs when too much fluid accumulates in the blood. carbon dioxide. A deep breath and an involuntary sharp exhalation supply a large portion of oxygen to the body, due to which the gas balance is restored.
2. Morning yawning is a great way to activate the body. As a rule, it is accompanied by stretching - a kind of gymnastics that kneads muscles and joints. As a result, the body receives a charge of vigor, blood circulation increases, and an increased portion of oxygen begins to actively flow to all organs. 
3. Before an important event, many people are attacked by yawning. Famous historical fact: Emperor Napoleon always yawned in front of major battles. Artists before going on stage, athletes before the start of competitions, patients in front of the dentist's office, and many others are susceptible to this symptom. Maybe, biological mechanism The process is the same as in previous cases: an increase in the level of adrenaline requires the activation of oxygen supply to all organs, which occurs during yawning.
4. Many airline passengers know: if your ears are blocked on the plane, you need to actively yawn, and then the pressure inside and outside eardrum will become equal, and the feeling of congestion will disappear.
5. Yawning helps you relax and unwind. Paradoxically, this is a fact confirmed by many studies. Some relaxation techniques necessarily include a few yawns. To provoke them, you need to lie down comfortably, relax your muscles and open your mouth as wide as possible, imitating a yawn - soon after that you will begin to yawn for real. Interestingly, many Japanese enterprises have special breaks for yawning: employees stop working and yawn for 10 minutes. After such ten minutes, attention and productivity increase sharply, just like after a long rest. 
So the call “Don’t yawn!” in some cases, it may be necessary, but you cannot completely abandon yawns because of their obvious benefits for the body.
A person begins to yawn within five minutes after birth. Only recently has this common occurrence come to the attention of researchers, notably Robert Provine of the University of Maryland. He found that this is the body's signal about oxygen deficiency, which occurs when a person is tired or bored and needs to shake himself up.
The researcher placed a group of student volunteers in a room where the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels were gradually changed. The scientist counted the number of yawns of each subject. Although the subjects' breathing rate increased as the oxygen deficit in the room increased, the intensity of the yawns remained constant. It remained constant even when breathing pure oxygen.
Yawning is known to be accompanied by stretching, especially after sleep. The same pattern of yawning with stretching is observed an hour before a night's rest. This suggested the idea that yawning is, first of all, gymnastics, which turned out to be necessary primarily for... the soul. It is curious that when yawning, even people with one-sided paralysis, a consequence of a stroke, gain the ability to move.
People yawn most often when they lack impressions or are under stress - before an exam, a responsible public speaking. The process of yawning is extremely contagious. So, sitting in front of the TV, on the screens of which yawning people were shown, the audience yawned even more often, meme people on the screen.
But the main thing is that Provine’s research did not provide a comprehensive answer to the question - why do humans and animals yawn?
And here is what the encyclopedia “Cyril and Methodius” says about this:
Think about how you stretch languidly and yawn sweetly... or look at the image to the left of the text... Do you feel like yawning? "This normal reaction"- says Robert Provine, professor of physiology at the University of Maryland. "Yawning is an extremely contagious process. Once you see a person yawning, you will yawn; hear the sound of a yawn - the same thing; or you are reading a book, and when the hero yawns, you yawn too... Even sitting in absolute darkness in a completely empty room, you just have to think about yawning - and you will definitely yawn!” says the professor.
Science explains yawning by the need to deliver large doses of oxygen to the brain. However, Provine believes that not everything is so simple. With his experiments, he proved that even in an extremely oxygen-rich atmosphere, a person yawns just as willingly as in conditions poorer in oxygen. The ability to yawn appears during the first third intrauterine development. A yawn serves as a signal of changes in the body.
Yawns usually accompany the transition from wakefulness to sleep. However, as surprising as it may sound, yawns are often accompanied by the reverse transition - from sleep to wakefulness or to increased alertness. For example, if a musician yawns very actively before a concert, this does not mean that he did not get enough sleep... his body is simply preparing for heavy loads during an important event.
Yawning is also a synchronizer for humans group behavior. When a person yawns, it starts chain reaction, involving everyone around you. So, regardless of the changes occurring in our body, these processes are synchronized with their neighbors.
"You make me laugh!" Like yawns, laughter is also highly contagious.
(Note from "KM": in the Russian language there is even such an adjective - "infectious", and is used precisely in combination with the word "laughter"! True, I don’t think anyone has ever talked about yawns like that.) When there are a lot of laughing people around, it’s hard not to join them or at least smile. And the harder you try to keep a serious face, the harder it is to do so. This mechanism has developed in humans because, Provine believes, laughter is directly related to relationships between people. "Laughter is like the glue that binds a group of people together. It is a legacy of the past - biological method bringing people together. We don't allow ourselves to laugh with others - we just laugh with them."
But there is another type of laughter - mockery, ridicule. In this case, the person is actually denied the right to be a member of the group, he is expelled from it.
In general, Provine sums up, if someone yawns in your face, or other people turn around at your laughter and start smiling too, do not take this as a sign of lack of culture or disrespect. In these moments, only some of the simplest and most uncomplicated are manifested, but nevertheless, wonderful examples social human behavior.
Nizhnepenskaya Secondary School"
Topic: Yawning: what is it and is it true?
contagious
3rd grade student of the Nizhnepenskaya Secondary School
Scientific supervisor: Najafova Elena Nikolaevna,
teacher primary classes Municipal educational institution "Nizhnepenskaya Secondary School"
Place of work: Municipal educational institution "Nizhnepenskaya Secondary School"
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………… 3
Chapter 1. Yawning: what is it?……………………………………………………………..4
Chapter 2. The reason for yawning ……………………………………………………….5
Chapter 3. The contagiousness of yawning……………………………………………………………8
Chapter 4. My research………………………………………………….. ..9
3 conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………12
List of used literature……………………………………………………..13
Appendix………………………………………………………………………………...14
Introduction
In Paris, at the end of June 2011, the first international congress dedicated to the study of this phenomenon was held in one of the largest hospitals in the capital, the Salpêtrière. It brought together the leading experts on this issue from Canada, India, France, Belgium, Italy, Israel and several other countries.
The main expert in France in this field is Dr. Olivier Walusinsky. He became interested in this phenomenon after a man came to see him in 1978 and complained that he yawned literally every minute. And he can't do anything about it. Despite all the acquired medical knowledge, the doctor was powerless to determine the causes of this phenomenon. Trying to find something in the works of his colleagues, Waluzinsky quickly became convinced that few of them dealt with this issue. Olivier Walusinski after for long years research has calculated: over the course of a lifetime, an average person yawns approximately 250 thousand times. Moreover, with old age, the number of yawns decreases sharply.
When my teacher, Elena Nikolaevna, and I chose this topic, neither I nor she could think how interesting the study of yawning would be, how unexpected the results would be.
Main goal My research was to identify the causes of yawning, determine and study the properties of this reflex.
Before the study began, I believed that people only yawn when they want to sleep. Mom questioned my conclusion, and together we determined tasks which my work should solve:
Working hypothesis my research: Yawning does not cause any harm to the body, and is even beneficial.
The main result Through my work, I see the expansion of the circle of knowledge of my classmates about the characteristics of our body, about such a reflex as yawning.
An object research - yawning reflex. Item research - causes and consequences of yawning. Place research: 3rd grade of the Nizhnepenskaya Secondary School. Term conduct of the study: November – December 2013
Research methods: collecting information through studying literature, Internet resources, questioning and conducting experiments, analyzing and summarizing the information received.
Relevance research is that we still know little about the human body to take care of our health. You need to know your body well. The results of my work will be of interest to my peers and can be applied in lessons about the world around me.
Chapter 1. Yawning: what is it?
Sneezing, hiccups, stretching and yawning are reflexes given by nature that apply to everything defense mechanisms for the body.
Yawning is one of the mysterious phenomena body. WITH medical point yawning is involuntary breathing movement consisting of slowly inhaling widely open mouth and rapid energetic exhalation. Accompanied characteristic sound caused by vibration vocal cords, and in some cases, stretching movements in humans, and in animals, stepping over the legs and arching the back. However, Nature has arranged it so that, along with the manifestations discomfort Yawning also performs a useful, protective function for the body.
Scientists were prompted to this idea by the fact that yawning is characteristic not only of humans, but also of animals. Animals also love to yawn - dog and cat owners know this very well. And tigers, lions, leopards, birds, fish, snakes yawn with all their animal souls... Ostriches begin to yawn when they need to show their opponent their strength and compete for a friend. Hippopotamuses yawn very often, with their mouth opening one hundred and fifty degrees. Even frogs yawn! And chimpanzees yawn when responding to people, just for company. And for some reason only one giraffe never deals with this matter.
Why is this involuntary breathing movement done not only by people, but also by frogs, birds, mammals and even fish? While yawning Airways expand, the facial and jaw muscles relax, after which there is a short pause, during which the whole body rests. The act of yawning involves the vascular, nervous, respiratory, circulatory, skeletal and muscular system human body. The nasopharynx channels open and straighten, leading to maxillary sinuses, and eustachian tubes, which lead to inner ear, the alveoli of the lungs open wide and their deep ventilation occurs. Blood supply and nutrition to the brain accelerates.
This is probably why many people yawn with such visible pleasure, accompanying yawning with an open mouth with various sounds. Research by scientists and experimental observations confirm that yawning helps a tired person stay awake longer. In the teachings of yogis, it is considered one of the five vitality person.
Chapter 2. Causes of yawning
I found as many as eight reasons, each of which can cause yawning, but not all of them can make you yawn.
Reason one: lack of oxygen
A person yawns when too much carbon dioxide accumulates in his body. Take a deep breath - and the body receives a good portion of oxygen, and with it strength and energy. That's why, when we sit for a long time in class closed doors, we don’t ventilate it for a long time, the room becomes unbearably stuffy, we start yawning. And it is wrong to assume that this process occurs because you did not get enough sleep and are working hard in class.
Two American laboratories are currently studying yawning. Psychologist Robert Provine decided to test the common idea that yawning is a deep breath to ventilate the lungs to improve oxygen supply. He recruited volunteers from among first-year students and gave them to breathe gas mixtures of oxygen and carbon dioxide in different ratios. It turned out that when high content carbon dioxide, the respiratory rate increased, but the number of yawns did not increase. And while breathing pure oxygen, the students yawned no less often than usual. This led Provine to the conclusion that gas exchangenot the main function of yawning.
Reason two: the need for stretching When we yawn, we often stretch, tensing the muscles of our arms, legs and back - excellent gymnastics! Blood pressure decreases and muscle tone improves. By yawning a couple of times, you can bring yourself to adequate condition. Excellent prevention of heart disease.
Robert Provine believes that yawning is something like a local stretching of the facial and jaw muscles.
Particularly impressive are hippos, which open their mouths as much as 150 degrees.
It is known that you can breathe through both your mouth and nose, but they yawn only by opening their mouth. Therefore, Provine suggested that it is not a deep breath, but a wide opening of the mouth that is the most important thing in yawning. Yawning, according to Provine, is akin to stretching. It’s not for nothing that when we yawn, we often stretch our whole body.
Reason three: brain overheating
A group of scientists from Binghamton University, led by Professor Andrew Gallop, came to the conclusion that one of the main causes of yawning is... brain overheating! Having heated up to a certain critical temperature, the brain begins to function worse. A yawn, which is essentially a deep inhalation and quick exhalation, ensures the intake of cool air externally, helps cool the blood and at the same time cools the brain.
The study was conducted on a group budgies. It was not by chance that they were chosen for the experiment. These birds have relatively big brain, they live in Australia, where frequent temperature fluctuations are the norm. Unlike people and some animals, they are not characterized by the so-called “contagious yawning”.
The parrots were observed in three different conditions: elevated, high and adjustable average temperature. If in the first two cases special effect was not observed, then with an artificial increase in temperature the number of yawns almost doubled.
Researchers have suggested that when the brain is tired, it overheats and needs to cool down, which is why people tend to yawn in this state. Apparently, it is for this reason that when the forehead cools and breathing through the nose increases, yawning stops.
Scientists also believe that yawning may indicate certain diseases associated with impaired thermoregulation of the brain. No wonder frequent yawning- one of the symptoms multiple sclerosis. In addition, it often precedes epileptic seizures and migraine attacks. Therefore, people suffering from attacks of frequent, causeless yawning should consult a doctor.
Reason four: boredom
Another American specialist by yawn, Ronald Banninger and his staff watched people in different situations, counting the frequency of yawns. The highest frequency - 24.6 yawns per hour per person - was observed in a seminar on differential calculus at the university where Banninger works. Mathematicians are offended by it, but the psychologist says that yawning is associated not only with boredom and the desire to sleep. Yawning occurs when, despite boredom, you feel obligated to remain awake. Yawn, says Banninger, is the body's way of maintaining alertness when, despite the monotony of a situation and scarcity external stimuli, we need to stay alert. For example, a driver driving on an upscale highway yawns a lot. And very few people yawn while lying in bed before falling asleep. In this case, nothing prevents sleep, there is no reason to drive it away.
We also want to yawn when we read a boring book or listen to an uninteresting lecture. Boredom affects nervous system as a sleeping pill. Therefore, it is often said that yawning is a companion to boredom.
Reason five: monotonous work
We are especially vulnerable during monotonous and boring work. American psychologists somehow took the time to count the number of yawns at one of the mathematics seminars. It turned out that the average student can make 25 “aaaahs” (in the sense of yawns) in an hour. This “aaaaah” helps to invigorate the body, which is ready to fall asleep. Pragmatic Japanese businessmen have long introduced special yawning breaks for workers at their enterprises. First the employees imitate him, and then they yawn full program, relieving stress and temporarily forgetting about your problems. And then they work twice as productive!
Reason six: desire to sleep
Many people associate yawning with the process of sleep. “If you yawn, it means you want to sleep” - this generally accepted point of view is not entirely true and very superficially reflects the cause and purpose of yawning. After all, we yawn not only before going to bed, but also after waking up, when we are alert and fresh. We yawn in a stuffy room and in moments of fatigue.
Yawning is a relatively rare signal that a person wants to sleep. If you've tried everything known remedies for insomnia, but you still can’t fall asleep, try imitating a yawn. Accept comfortable position, relax and yawn sweetly, closing your eyes and opening your mouth wide. Repeat this several times, and perhaps the long-awaited dream will come to you.
Reason seven: nervousness, stress, moment of excitement or tension
In situations involving strong emotional stress, dangerous, turns on spontaneously ancient mechanism: a person instinctively freezes, holding his breath. And then another mechanism turns on - yawning. At the same time, a deep breath saturates the blood with oxygen, it enters the brain and muscles, maintaining a state of readiness for decisive action.
For many animals, yawning may not indicate calmness, but, on the contrary, increasing anxiety and stress. One study showed that this is why dogs and cats yawn so convulsively while waiting with their owners for an appointment with the veterinarian.
This helps explain why, for example, people often yawn when they are waiting for some exciting event. Yawning often attacks athletes before competitions or students before an exam.
NASA specialists, having worked with test pilots and parachutists for many years, have repeatedly noticed that before important missions, many of them began to yawn. The same thing was observed among athletes who were preparing for diving from a diving board, circus performers before walking along a tightrope, and lecturers before an important performance.
But the point is this: in situations associated with strong emotional stress and danger, this ancient mechanism spontaneously turns on: by yawning, a person suppresses the feeling of fear and psychologically supports himself, preparing for decisive action.
By the way, Russian psychotherapy guru Vladimir Levi strongly advises yawning in his bestseller “Taming Fear” in order to get rid of obsessive thoughts, worries, worries. One of the most effective and fast-acting remedies! “It’s very simple to imitate a yawn, and it’s very easy, once you get used to it, to translate the simulated yawn into a real one, then you won’t be able to stop,” says Levy. – And yawning, if it does not exclude all other states, then greatly “yawns”...
Musicians complain about yawning just before the start of a concert.
Reason eight: fatigue
A hypothesis put forward by Robert Provine, an American psychologist, attributes yawning to fatigued brain cells. It is from them, through nerve fibers, the facial muscles receive the command to start a yawn. This is the primary signal included in the complex of signals for the transition from activity to sleep. This may be true, but people yawn quite often when waking up.
Yawning occurs when performance nerve cells reduced, for example, as a result physical fatigue, before bedtime or immediately after sleep.
Interesting facts about yawning · A typical yawn lasts, on average, 6 seconds.
There is one undeniable fact about yawning: it is terribly contagious. As soon as one person starts yawning, everyone around him picks it up. This banal fact was studied for a long time by English psychologists from the University of Leeds. “Contagious yawning is an extremely interesting phenomenon,” said study leader Dr Katrina Morrison. “To pick it up, you don’t need to see or even hear a person—you just need to think or read about it.”
The contagiousness of yawning is an undeniable fact. One person begins to yawn demonstratively, and the people nearby immediately join him. There is a hypothesis linking this phenomenon with an evolutionary rudiment. Yawning served for coordination social behavior in primitive human groups. In school animals it serves precisely this purpose. Among apes, this is a sign given by a tired leader to the entire pack. A yawn in response means agreement to “take a little break.” Thus, non-verbal, i.e. non-speech communication. Sounds like a joke. Although, why not? According to another theory, the contagiousness of yawning is due to the fact that it was important for the pack to go to bed at the same time. So yawning served and serves as a signal that it is time to sleep. Perceiving a neighbor's yawn as a signal to yawn himself and then to fall asleep, herd animals are accustomed to sleeping together, warming and protecting each other during sleep. In addition, yawning can be a signal in animals to eat. If during the migration of ostriches several individuals begin to yawn at once, the flock stops to search for food.
It turned out that the most “contagious” were yawns among family members.
They made half of the subjects want to yawn too. In the evening, in our family we also tried to conduct this experiment, in which my mother, me, grandmother, grandfather and brother participated. The experiment was a success - in response to my energetic yawning, I was sent to bed twice and my grandparents yawned back to me.
Giraffes are the only animals that cannot yawn. Almost all warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals periodically open their mouths in an attempt to yawn - birds, fish and mammals are guilty of this. The average person yawns about 250 thousand times in their life. But the giraffe is not like that. He has never yawned even once in his entire life. At least, in the entire history of observations of giraffes, scientists have not been able to catch a single long-necked one doing this activity.
Chapter 4. My research
My research plan included surveying my classmates and conducting research among them. I marked the survey questions in the appendix of my questionnaire (Appendix 1).
Poll results
The first question of the questionnaire fully confirmed the contagiousness of yawning: eight out of eleven respondents responded with a yawn to a yawn.
Those who answered the second question once again confirm that it would be nice to sleep after lunch.
The answers to the third question of the questionnaire to some extent confirmed the cause of brain overheating:
The answers to the fourth question did not support the theory that yawning occurs during times of stress, tension or excitement:
Boredom takes its toll: nine out of eleven respondents yawn where they are bored and uninterested
Nine out of eleven yawned during the survey. I think if the questionnaire had pictures, the majority would have yawned.
Then, in class, with the teacher’s permission, I conducted an experiment. At every lesson of one school day, I was called to the board, during which I yawned several times, and my teacher counted how many children involuntarily yawned after me. So, in the first Russian language lesson, 3 out of 11 students yawned after me, in the second mathematics lesson, 1 out of 11 students, in the third reading lesson, more than one student, but in the fourth music lesson, 6 out of 11 people already yawned. Therefore, we can say that yawning is contagious and after dinner I really want to sleep.
Conclusion
As a result of doing research work, I learned about what yawning is and what are the reasons for its occurrence, many interesting facts from the life of people and animals. Now I understand why Elena Nikolaevna ventilates the classroom every morning before our arrival and at every break, and why we have a big break every day, and sometimes during physical education lessons we go outside: so that we yawn less. But, most likely, in this sense, her labors are in vain, since I now know that oxygen starvation brain is not the main cause of yawning.
My working hypothesis was confirmed: yawning is good for the body, it helps relieve stress, fatigue, mental stress and stimulates brain function. Yawning also promotes the activity of the lacrimal glands, normalizes arterial pressure, improves mood, helps prevent heart attack and other heart diseases.
So you shouldn’t fight yawning, and it turns out that yawning in class is even useful!
References
1. Petrovsky B.V. Big medical encyclopedia. Ed. 3, 1978 T 8 Eugenics - ripple, 528s, 9l.incl.
2. Petrovsky B.P. Brief medical encyclopedia: In 3 volumes. USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, 2nd ed. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia - T 3. Rickettsial diseases - pangolin. 1990. – 560 p. ill. 52 l - silt.
3. Pokrovsky V.P. Encyclopedia of health. In 4 volumes. M.: IPO "Author", 1992. - 288 p. 8l. ill.
Internet resources:
Annex 1.
Questionnaire
If I see someone yawning at work, I:
If it suddenly happens that one of your classmates yawns in class, then this happens:
I see that most often my parents yawn:
What do you think can trigger yawning:
Watching what genre of film would you yawn in your chair at home?
Did you yawn at least once while answering this questionnaire?
Najafova Elena Nikolaevna
10 interesting facts about yawning! Why do we yawn and why?
We bet that by the time you read this article to the end, you will yawn at least once (at least!) once?
10th place: The ancients believed that the soul was able to leave the body not through the ears, nose, eyes or other openings, but through the mouth. And it is through the mouth that demons can enter there. That is why modern polite man, guided by this superstition, covers his mouth when he yawns. The Austrian artist Lampiy was returning one day with a friend from a performance. “It surprises me,” his companion remarked, that such boring thing they didn’t boo!” “Nothing surprising,” the artist replied, “when you yawn, it’s impossible to whistle!”
9th place: Experts have no doubt that yawning can be infected and, as it turned out, in any of its manifestations: in a recent study, 75% of subjects only had to read about it to yawn.
8th place: The most reliable way to correctly place punctuation marks is the typesetters method. Here is his summary. Type until you can hold your breath without your face turning blue. When exhaling, put a comma. When you turn red and you want to sneeze - red line. When you want to yawn, use a semicolon.
7th place: In the course of research, New York neurologists found that when yawning, the airways expand, and the human brain receives large dose oxygen. By yawning, a person relaxes, relieves fatigue and nervous tension. So don’t be offended if a friend yawns in your company - this means that he feels good and is resting.
6th place: In criminal folklore there is quite logical advice - “don’t yawn.” This is the so-called "eleventh commandment."
5th place: The longest yawn was documented in 1888. According to the Guinness Book of Records, a certain Dr. Lee reported that a 15-year-old girl did this continuously for five weeks.
4th place: Someone Mon - a resident of Paris - was once very surprised when, after listening to radio broadcasts, he turned off the receiver, but continued to hear the radio as if inside himself. This phenomenon did not go away after a few seconds, minutes, days. The poor guy turned to all sorts of doctors, explaining that the only relief came only when he yawned! Only 2 months later Mon was helped by an electrical engineer he knew. He advised replacing gold teeth with porcelain ones: 2 metal parts opposite each other create a miniature magnetic field.
3rd place: One of the New York television studios began to practice new way providing assistance to suffering people - at the end of the evening programs, a person appears on the television screen for a few minutes and yawns sweetly.
2nd place: It turns out that even frogs yawn. If an animal yawns: If a doe or gazelle begins to do this while the herd is moving, it means she is signaling that she is tired and the herd is stopping. A crocodile yawns before an attack, and a chick yawns when it wants to eat. As for the sexual side of the issue, among monkeys, for example, the male gives an unambiguous signal of love by looking straight into the female’s eyes and yawning loudly.
1st place: GERONIMO (GOYATLAY), leader of the Chiricahua Indian tribe, who led for four years fighting against US troops. His Indian name means “he who yawns,” and his English name became the battle cry of paratroopers.
No, no, just yawning is such a contagious thing that you only need to mention it once and you automatically start taking a deep breath and covering your mouth with your palm.
Yawn. From a medical point of view, the process is more than banal. “An involuntary breathing movement consisting of a long, deep inhalation and a vigorous exhalation.” Why is this most involuntary breathing movement necessary? A person yawns when too much carbon dioxide accumulates in his body. Take a deep breath - and the body receives a good portion of oxygen, and with it strength and energy. And therefore it is wrong to think that we yawn only when we want to sleep.
Surprisingly, a person begins to yawn long before birth! Scientists have found that already at the 12th week of development in the womb, the embryo is yawning with might and main. Animals, by the way, are also onlookers. Those who have a dog or cat at home understand perfectly well what I mean. True, they do not do this before bed, like we do, but on the contrary, when they become excited. For example, before a walk. And some animals yawn to show the enemy their sharp (and dangerous!) teeth. Particularly impressive are hippos, which open their mouths as much as 150 degrees. Wow!
And yawning, as you know, is very contagious. As soon as one person yawns in the room, everyone else takes a deep breath and covers their mouth with their hand. Research has confirmed that the yawning “virus” infects 40-60% of those around them: the group was asked to watch a video in which the actors yawned every now and then. As a result, every second participant in the experiment fell victim to this yawning infection.
During the same experiment, scientists noticed that those subjects who had an active area of the brain responsible for empathy were “infected.” That is, if your neighbor yawns after you, he is a sensitive and responsive person. Mind you!
And yet, yawning does not spread through the air. They yawn from lack of sleep while sitting through a boring monotonous lecture. Or poring over a textbook at night, when everything good people sleep. Or listening for the fiftieth time to a friend’s story on the topic “And he... And I... Blah-blah-blah...”. She looks at you with offended eyes. “Are you bored, huh?” - “No, no, what are you talking about! Continue!" And you yawn embarrassedly.
We are especially vulnerable during monotonous and boring work. American psychologists somehow took the time to count the number of yawns at one of the mathematics seminars. It turned out that the average student can make 25 “aaaahs” (in the sense of yawns) in an hour. This “aaaah” helps to invigorate the body, which is about to fall asleep. In Japan, by the way, at some enterprises they take special breaks, during which workers carefully yawn - first imitating, and then being drawn into a real yawn - and... continue to work twice as actively. Brilliant, right?
Another source of yawning, besides boredom and fatigue, is nervousness. For example, before an interview or an important meeting. By taking a breath, we relieve stress and mobilize strength.
Causes may include migraines, circulatory disorders in the brain, vegetative-vascular dystonia and other troubles accompanied by drowsiness and daytime weakness, which is a reason to visit a neurologist.
One way or another, yawning is useful and vital, so yawn to your health!
And some interesting facts about yawning.
# A common person yawns for an average of 6 seconds with a frequency of 68 seconds.
# Men and women yawn equally often, but men cover their mouths less often.
# Chimpanzees are also susceptible to massive yawning. When one yawns, after 6 seconds everyone else becomes infected. But their cubs do not react; why remains a mystery to scientists.
# The best way to get rid of yawning is to stand up, move around, or, if you can’t stand up (say, in class), straighten your shoulders and do a couple of deep breaths and exhalations.
# If they are looking at you, then you are unlikely to yawn.
# The superstitious Russian people did not ignore the phenomenon of yawning and came up with their own “tricks”. Firstly, they claim that when you yawn, evil spirits can fly inside (?), so while you open your mouth and take a breath, you need to cross your mouth, otherwise... Yes, and secondly, if you yawn often, it means you have been jinxed.
