Contagious yawning
Like most people, I'm very susceptible to contagious yawning. Even when I'm wide awake, if I see someone yawn, I can't help but yawn myself. Curious about why this happens, I consulted the good old "interwebs" and, after a few quick Google searches, discovered the following:
Contagious yawning is primarily driven by empathy and social bonding, facilitated by the brain's mirror neuron system, which triggers the nonconscious mimicry of others' actions. While it feels like an automatic reflex, it is actually a complex social behaviour that typically develops around the age of four, coinciding with the maturation of empathy and theory of mind.
So, if you didn't know. now you do.
Did you yawn?