• Question: Why do people yawn when they are bored??

    Asked by spacenut1982 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Jess Bean

      Jess Bean answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Don’t quote me on this (and I have no idea if this is right!) but I think it’s something to do with that if you’re bored you tend to breath less deeply.

      If you breath less you get less oxygen into your blood which is picked up by your brain. You’re brain then thinks “Oh dear! I’m not getting enough air! I know what will fix this – a massive yawn :)”

    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      no one really knows why we yawn but there are lots of theories about it! including it being a social thing to communicate… we usually thing yawning helps us get more oxygen into our bodies but apparently it may actually reduce the amount of oxygen we get in! maybe we yawn to stretch our mouths, or to make ourselves more alert by moving or… one of the nice things about science is that as well as it explaining lots of things there are still plenty of really common things that we just don’t know the answer to – Yet!

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