Anyone who yawns for a long time is probably smarter. This is what emerged from one international study on animals and published in the journal Communication Biology. In fact, the findings showed that vertebrates with the largest brains and the most efficient synapses tend to have longer-lasting yawns.
The researchers observed the yawns of 1,291 vertebrate animals, covering in total 55 mammal species and 46 bird species. Yawning is a semi-voluntary action controlled by neurotransmitters in the hypothalamus: science has been studying this phenomenon for years, but has not yet been able to draw firm conclusions on two important aspects. That is, why we yawn and why some animals, such as giraffes, do not need to yawn.
Yawning serves to cool the brain
The team of experts, coordinated by the ethologist Jorg Massen (Utrecht University), therefore decided to investigate the unknown components of the yawn, starting from a hypothesis formulated in 2007 by one of the authors of the study in question: yawning is a way to cool the brain, so whoever yawns more means that he has a bigger brain (there is more mass to cool).
The results showed that mammals tended to yawn much more frequently and longer than birds. This is because, experts explain, birds have one higher average core temperature of mammals, therefore they are able to “cool their brains” thanks to shorter yawns (because there is more difference between the external temperature and the internal temperature): the hypothesis advanced 14 years ago by the researcher seems to be confirmed.
The correlation between yawn length and brain size
There is therefore a correlation between the duration of a yawn and the size of the brain. The level of intelligence directly proportional to the size of the brain is a false myth, but scientists argue that it is not only a question of volume, but also of the quality of the connections between neurons, thanks to a better functioning of the synapses: “Although the pattern of the yawn is fixed, its duration has evolved together with the size of the brain and the number of neurons ”, reads the research paper. Is this also the case for man? More in-depth studies will be needed to understand this, but previous research had shown that humans yawn much longer than mice.
© All rights reserved