What Yawning Says About Our Intelligence

Yawning is not only contagious,, but is also supposed to tell us something about our intelligence. This has now been discovered by US experts.

We yawn out of tiredness or boredom – and pump valuable oxygen into our lungs to keep the blood circulation going. It circulates blood and cools our brain. Now researchers from New York State have found out that yawning is also a sign of intelligence. The core statement: Those who yawn for a long time should have more nerve cells in the cerebral cortex. But how was this found out?

The researchers studied 29 species for this assumption, including mice, cats, dogs, foxes, elephants and, of course, humans. The experts published the results in the journal “Biology Letters“.

Yawning differences

On average, mice yawn for about 0.8 seconds; around four million nerve cells colonize the cerebrum of small mammals. Cats yawn slightly shorter at 2.1 seconds than dogs, which yawn on average 2.2 seconds. On the other hand, they have about 300 million nerve cells, almost twice as many as dogs (about 160 million). Humans have a yawning time of about 6.5 seconds and have 21 billion nerve cells. African elephants yawn the second longest at about 6 seconds and have the second most nerve cells.

These data were determined very simply – over 177 YouTube videos of yawning creatures. The researchers are not yet able to say exactly how yawning duration and nerve cell count are related. However, it seems reasonable to assume that it has something to do with the temperature regulation of the brain.