ArticleScientific reports2020
Experimental evidence for yawn contagion in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus).
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- The play fever: individual and group factors influence the contagion of play behaviour within social hominid groups.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The development of play face mimicry: comparative insights from human infants, adults and orangutans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- Behavioral Contagion in Wild Ecuadorian White-Fronted Capuchins (Cebus aequatorialis).American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Chimpanzees yawn when observing an android yawn.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Yawning in sync: implications for social cohesion in horses.Current zoology · 2025Article
- Is it a Match? Yawn Contagion and Smile Mimicry in Toddlers.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Yawn Contagion and Modality-Matching in the Female-Bonded Society of Geladas (Theropithecus gelada).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Contagious yawning and scratching in captive lemurs.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Selective and prolonged attention to emotional scenes in humans and bonobos.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Yawning and scratching contagion in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- How video calls affect mimicry and trust during interactions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- No Evidence for Biased Attention Towards Emotional Scenes in Bornean Orangutans (Affective science · 2022Article
- "Emotional Proximity" and "Spatial Proximity": Higher Relationship Quality and Nearer Distance Both Strengthen Scratch Contagion in Tibetan Macaques.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Interspecific Contagious Yawning in Humans.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- No Evidence for Contagious Yawning in Juvenile Ravens (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Yawn contagion in bonobos: Another group, another story.American journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Factors affecting yawning frequencies in preterm neonates.PloS one · 2022Article
- Hearing Someone Laugh and Seeing Someone Yawn: Modality-Specific Contagion of Laughter and Yawning in the Absence of Others.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Two forms of yawning modulation in three months old infants during the Face to Face Still Face paradigm.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Yawning is highly contagious, yet both its proximate mechanism(s) and its ultimate causation remain poorly understood. Scholars have suggested a link between contagious yawning (CY) and sociality due to its appearance in mostly social species. Nevertheless, as findings are inconsistent, CY's function and evolution remains heavily debated. One way to understand the evolution of CY is by studying it in hominids. Although CY has been found in chimpanzees and bonobos, but is absent in gorillas, data on orangutans are missing despite them being the least social hominid. Orangutans are thus interesting for understanding CY's phylogeny. Here, we experimentally tested whether orangutans yawn contagiously in response to videos of conspecifics yawning. Furthermore, we investigated whether CY was affected by familiarity with the yawning individual (i.e. a familiar or unfamiliar conspecific and a 3D orangutan avatar). In 700 trials across 8 individuals, we found that orangutans are more likely to yawn in response to yawn videos compared to control videos of conspecifics, but not to yawn videos of the avatar. Interestingly, CY occurred regardless of whether a conspecific was familiar or unfamiliar. We conclude that CY was likely already present in the last common ancestor of humans and great apes, though more converging evidence is needed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.