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health advisory Hospital Health advisory 2007-11-16 5:20:56

Answer:

The Physiological Theory

Our bodies induce yawning to drawn in more oxygen or remove a build-up of carbon dioxide. This theory helps explain why we yawn in groups. Larger groups produce more carbon dioxide, which means our bodies would act to draw in more oxygen and get rid of the excess carbon dioxide. However, if our bodies make us yawn to drawn in needed oxygen, wouldn't we yawn during exercise? Robert Provine, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a leading expert on yawning, has tested this theory. Giving people additional oxygen didn't decrease yawning and decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in a subject's environment also didn't prevent yawning.

The Evolution Theory

Some think that yawning is something that began with our ancestors, who used yawning to show their teeth and intimidate others. An offshoot of this theory is the idea that yawning developed from early man as a signal for us to change activities.

The Boredom Theory

In the dictionary, yawning is said to be caused by boredom, fatigue or drowsiness. Although we do tend to yawn when bored or tired, this theory doesn't explain why Olympic athletes yawn right before they compete in their event. It's doubtful that they are bored with the world watching them.

The simple truth is that even though humans have been yawning for possibly as long as they have existed, we still have no clue as to why we do it.

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They do really understand that yet but I did see that monkeys seem to do the same thing.

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Happens all the time its called The Power Of Suggestion.

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Monkey see, monkey do.

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The yawn reflex is often described as contagious: if one person yawns, this will cause another person to "sympathetically" yawn.[3] Additionally, the Mythbusters attempted an experiment documenting this effect in episode 2.28, "[Yawning Contagious?]", with a conclusion of partly confirmed. The proximate cause for contagious yawning may lie with mirror neurons, i.e. neurons in the frontal cortex of certain vertebrates, which upon being exposed to a stimulus from conspecific (same species) and occasionally interspecific organisms, activates the same regions in the brain[4]. Mirror neurons have been proposed as a driving force for imitation which lies at the root of much human learning, e.g. language acquisition. Yawning may be an offshoot of the same imitative impulse.