The Comparative Minds research group (Universitat de Girona) is proud to announce a new publication in Scientific Reports (Nature), in collaboration with City, University of London. This novel study tested whether adult chimpanzees exhibit contagious yawning when exposed to a yawning android—an artificial agent with human-like facial expressions.

The results were striking: more than half of the chimpanzees yawned in response to the android, and several also showed signs of drowsiness such as lying down or nest-building. These findings suggest that non-human primates may interpret yawns from unfamiliar, non-biological agents as meaningful social cues, potentially triggering innate responses tied to empathy and rest.

Dr. Miquel Llorente, senior researcher at Comparative Minds and Serra Húnter Fellow at the Universitat de Girona, co-authored the study and contributed to its design and behavioural analysis.

This research highlights the potential of using robotic agents to study fundamental aspects of social cognition, and challenges the assumption that empathy-like processes in animals are limited to interactions with familiar, biological individuals.

🔗 Link to article