Yawning

American Scientist ^ | Nov-Dec issue | Robert R. Provine

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The yawn is primal, unstoppable and contagious, revealing the evolutionary and neural basis of empathy and unconscious behavior

Imagine a yawn. You stretch your jaws open in a wide gape, take a deep inward breath, followed by a shorter exhalation, and end by closing your jaws. Ahhh. You have just joined vertebrates everywhere in one of the animal kingdom's most ancient rites. Mammals and most other animals with backbones yawn; fish, turtles, crocodiles and birds do it. People start yawning very early, offering further evidence of its ancient origins. Yawning is present by the end of the first trimester of prenatal human development and is obvious in newborns.

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Keep practicing with your baby, it's an easy and relaxed beginning of interactive conversation.

Evolution? It's not in the article? (my links do not let some, but not all, to the entire article.---can you access it okay?)

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...seeing a dog or cat yawn does not make me yawn and vice versa.

You may well be one of those rare individuals who is distinctly human.

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AHhhh...the closed-mouth yawn.

As a student it was learned, as a professor it was refined and as a psychotherapist it was perfected.

Hey, BTW, the best way to relax is to begin with several, forced, wide open-mouthed yawns