Dogs were more likely to yawn after hearing the yawn of a familiar human than of an unfamiliar human

Ask and ye shall be answered.

A few weeks ago I wondered about cross-species yawning in A Couple of Puzzlers.

Today I came across Studying Contagious Yawning Might Help Us Build Better Societies by Jason G. Goldman.

In 2009, psychologist Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni showed that human yawns are contagious for dogs. But later that year, Aimee Harr was unable to replicate that finding. In 2010, Sean O’Hara and Amy Reeve uncovered more evidence in support of contagious yawning for dogs, but not nearly as robust a pattern as Joly-Mascheroni found. Karine Silva provided a partial answer, in 2012, as to why some researchers seem to find contagious yawning while others didn’t. She discovered that dogs were more likely to yawn after hearing the yawn of a familiar human than of an unfamiliar human. That actually makes a good deal of sense: if yawning is tied to empathy, then dogs might be more willing to empathize with familiar people than with strangers.

There you have it.