Yawning is so contagious that chimpanzees can “catch” it from cartoons, according to  American research. Scientists from Atlanta, found that an animation of a yawning chimp will stimulate real chimps to yawn.

They describe in the scientific magazine Royal Society Journal how this could assist in the future study of empathy. But there is more practical application imaginable; The work could also help unravel if and how computer games might cause children to imitate what they see on screen. It could be a valuable learning aid, but also a method to prevent damage caused by violent computer games.

Previous studies have already shown contagious yawning in chimpanzees - stimulated by video-recorded footage of yawns. “We wanted to expand on that,” explained Matthew Campbell, lead author of the study. “We’re interested in using animation for presenting stimuli to animals, because we can control all the features of what we show them.”

Although Dr Campbell doesn’t think the chimps were “fooled” by the animations into thinking they were looking at real chimps, he explained that there was evidence that chimpanzees “process animated faces the same way they process photographs of faces”. Maybe not surprising; in human children this works exactly the same way.

This story is from our science blog Knowing Knowledge