Can a cat yawn cause a contagious yawn in a dog?

Here is a video of a cat yawn leading to their dog companion yawning due to the contagious nature of this form of behaviour. Yawning contagion crosses the species barrier.

Cat yawn is contagious to their dog buddy. Screenshot.

RELATED: Is yawning contagious to cats?

Cats can cause a dog to yawn when they yawn. It's called contagious yawning and it is likely that you have heard about it. And, interestingly, contagious yawning also affects dogs when their owner yawns. The point probably is that if the dog is in a close relationship with a sentient being - normally another dog or a cat or a human - who yawns, then they are likely to yawn as well.

The University of Tokyo did a study and they found that just over half the dogs monitored yawned after watching their owners yawn. When the dogs watched a stranger yawning the contagion from those people to the dog was about half as powerful and they yawned about half is frequently.

And in the video below, we see a cat and dog who are very good friends. They are on Instagram (link). The dog is said to be a bit nervous and the cat is said to help calm the dog down. They are good buddies and the contagion effect is going to be much stronger from cat to dog under those circumstances.

Separately, in another study from the University of Portugal, they found that 12 of 29 dogs yawned when they heard a recording of their owners yawning. Powerful stuff.

You will find other studies on this topic. They've all come to the same conclusion that human yawning is contagious to dogs. I have extrapolated that information to strongly argue that cat yawning is also contagious to dogs if there is a close relationship between the two.

And the video on this page confirms it. I know that there is a possibility that the dog is simply yawning but it looks very much like contagious yawning to me.

Did you know that when lions wake up, they yawn to coordinate their movements?

Can cats "catch" yawns from each other?

Both domestic and wild cats can "catch" a yawn from each other. However, domestic cats don't, it seems, catch a yawn from their owner. The information comes from a research paper which is published online and from personal experience. And there is a video on the Reddit.com website of a mother cat yawning and her kitten immediately following the behaviour (see below).

Yawns are contagious between cats, but must they be related? Image: MikeB from Twitter images from the account of Twitter user @nanao_ssan.

With respect to cats, the question that I have is whether the yawn is contagious between unrelated domestic, stray or feral cats or whether it is confined to related cats and even mothers and their kittens. The point is not clear to me at this time. Yawns are certainly contagious between mothers and kittens. I think they are contagious between related cats or at least cats who are close associates or friends but beyond that it is unclear, and I doubt whether it exists.

Yawning is due to boredom or fatigue and if a human copies another human yawning it performs a social function. It is a form of empathy stating that they agree that they are bored and or tired. The question is whether when cats 'catch' a yawn, they perform the same social function. I suspect that they do.

There is a difference between dogs and cats in this regard. It's been found that yawns are contagious between people and their dog companions. In other words, when a dog owner yawns their dog might follow and yawn as well. This difference is probably based upon the fact that a dog considers their human family a pack in the same way that the dog's ancestor, the grey wolf, follows the alpha wolf and perhaps occasionally catches a yawn from them.

Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source, or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.

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The research paper referred to: Contagious Yawning in the Domestic Cat (Felis catus) by Ariel Lombardo Aghishian submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Animal Behaviour and Conservation, Hunter College City University of New York.