# Do elephants yawn?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-elephants-yawn/811652>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 2, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-elephants-yawn/811652 "2018-04-02T17:28:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-elephants-yawn/811652/1 "2018-04-02T17:28:53Z")

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See query. I’m interested in the answer, of course–who wouldn’t be?–but like my [burning question](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=737221) on tapeworms, it’s more about the physiology/classification of animals. Is there something in lungs, nervous system, musculature that one could point to in the animal kingdom to define the limits of “can yawn” and “can’t yawn?” My new Linnaeus…

And I believe yawning stems from both sympathetic as well as parasympathetic nervous systems. With that in mind, I have a question about dogs, my dog, in particular: I’ve read, and observed frequently, that dogs will/may yawn when they’re nervous or fearful. My dog, I can now say with conviction, yawns a lot–I mean a lot–when he’s blissing out when I scratch just right behind the ears, a response to similar to his when he purrs, sort of, while being scritched. This seems backwards to the received opinion, as far as I understand it. Is he weird?

That’s a FWIW and a mini-add-on to this query. Plus a MPSIMS that I smuggled in here I guess.

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**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2018, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-elephants-yawn/811652/2 "2018-04-02T17:35:31Z")

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Yes.

> **[Wakey wakey! Yawning elephants snapped in the act](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27786-wakey-wakey-yawning-elephants-snapped-in-the-act/)**
>
> Chimps do it. Hippos do it. Now sleepy elephants have been caught having an early morning yawn