Miller Michael L, Gallup Andrew C, Vogel Andrea R, Vicario Shannon M, Clark Anne B
Integrative Neuroscience Program, Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902, United States.
Behav Processes. 2012 Mar;89(3):264-70. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2011.12.012. Epub 2011 Dec 28.
Yawning is contagious in humans and some non-human primates. If there are social functions to contagious behaviors, such as yawning, they might occur in other highly social vertebrates. To investigate this possibility, we conducted an observational study of yawning and an associated behavior, stretching, in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), a social, flock-living parrot. Flock-housed budgerigars were videotaped for 1.5h at three time-blocks during the day (early morning, afternoon and early evening), and the times of all yawns and stretches for each bird were recorded. Both yawning and stretching were temporally clumped within sessions, but were uniformly distributed across the trials of a particular time-block. This suggests that clumping was not a result of circadian patterning and that both behaviors could be contagious. There was additional evidence of contagion in stretching, which occurred in two forms - a posterior-dorsal extension of either one foot or both feet. Birds that could have observed a conspecific stretch, and that then stretched themselves within 20s, replicated the form of the earlier stretch significantly more often than expected by chance. This study provides the first detailed description of temporal patterns of yawning under social conditions in a flock-living species as well as the first support for contagious yawning and stretching in a non-primate species in a natural context. Experimental evidence will be necessary to confirm the extent of contagion in either behavior.
打哈欠在人类和一些非人类灵长类动物中具有传染性。如果像打哈欠这样的传染性行为具有社会功能，那么它们可能也会出现在其他高度社会化的脊椎动物身上。为了探究这种可能性，我们对虎皮鹦鹉（Melopsittacus undulatus）——一种群居的鹦鹉——的打哈欠以及一种相关行为伸展进行了观察研究。将群居的虎皮鹦鹉在一天中的三个时间段（清晨、下午和傍晚）进行1.5小时的录像，并记录每只鸟所有打哈欠和伸展的时间。打哈欠和伸展在各时间段内都在时间上聚集，但在特定时间段的试验中分布均匀。这表明聚集不是昼夜节律模式的结果，并且这两种行为都可能具有传染性。在伸展行为中还有额外的传染证据，伸展有两种形式——单脚或双脚的后背部伸展。那些能够观察到同种个体伸展，然后在20秒内自己也伸展的鸟，重复先前伸展形式的频率显著高于随机预期。这项研究首次详细描述了群居物种在社会条件下打哈欠的时间模式，也是首次在自然环境中为非灵长类物种的传染性打哈欠和伸展提供支持。需要实验证据来证实这两种行为的传染程度。
