Birds copy yawns

New York: Contagious yawning occurs not only in some mammals but also between members of a bird species, a new study has found. Contagious yawning was previously thought only to occur between humans, domestic dogs, chimpanzees and a type of rodent aptly called the high-yawning Sprague-Dawley rat.

"To date, this is the first experimental evidence of contagious yawning in a non-mammalian species," said study leader Andrew Gallup of State University of New York in the US. The findings that contagious yawning occurs between budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), also known as parakeets, in a controlled laboratory setting corroborate a previous observation of the same thing happening in a flock of these social parrots.Gallup's team conducted two experiments. In the first, 16 birds were paired in adjacent cages with and without barriers blocking their view.If contagious, yawns should be clustered in time only when the birds can see another.