Watch a group of lions yawn, and it may seem like nothing more than big, lazy cats acting sleepy, but new research suggests that these yawns may be subtly communicating some important social cues.

The male lion known as "Makulu" from the Mapogo coalition stretching his jaw muscles.Filmed in the Sabi Sand Wildtuin, Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa Subscribe: https://bit.ly ...

Additionally, the roar of an animal such as a lion is used in the process of finding and competing for a mate.The roar pattern is composed of three overall segments - a beginning segment sounding ...

New research finds lions that have just yawned together are more likely to move in unison. Tambako The Jaguar via Flickr under CC BY-ND 2.0 Yawning is contagious for animals as well as humans ...

Lions have contagious yawns, and they seem to use the open-mouthed behaviour to send signals to each other. The observation provides the first concrete evidence that yawning can synchronise ...

In a new study, researchers examined contagious yawning in wild lions in South Africa. After being “infected” by others’ yawns, these lions tended to coordinate their movements.

IMAGE: A lion yawns at the Tata Steel Zoological Park in Jamshedpur. IMAGE: A pair of lions at the Tata Steel Zoological Park in Jamshedpur. IMAGE: A tiger sunbathes on a cold winter afternoon.

It's not just domesticated cats that engage in this behavior. Big cats, like lions, yawn too and can even be affected by contagious yawning — seeing another animal or person yawn and then ...

Seeing or hearing someone yawn can make you yawn. This phenomenon is not limited to humans; some animals experience contagious yawning, too. But why is yawning contagious? Brain cells called ...

However, the contagion of the yawn seems to be a predominantly human characteristic, with a few exceptions, such as chimpanzees or the lion monkey. This specificity reinforces the idea that human ...

Yawns occur in almost all vertebrates, from reptiles and birds to chimpanzees and lions. The yawn, Provine wrote, is “one of the animal kingdom’s most ancient rites”. As babies grow in the ...