Sophie Scott
đ¤ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So they yawn just because they have seen or heard another conspecific yawning.
And it's a social signal.
It's a sign of affiliation.
And you find it in humans.
You find it in dogs and chimps.
You find it in turtles and budgerigars.
So that's really, really widespread.
And there are quite a lot of behaviours that work this way.
So blinking is quite contagious.
Coughing is contagious.
Scratching is contagious.
It's pretty complex.
If you look at orangutans, they scratch contagiously.
Actually, it's a sign of anxiety in orangutans.
If an orangutan is scratching itself, that means it's anxious.
If another orangutan picks up that, it mirrors back that scratching.
They're basically indicating, oh yeah, I know what you mean.
This isn't great.
You have this whole world of contagious behaviours and they tend to have this affiliative element to them.
And it's also true for laughter.