A new report says as chimpanzees(黑猩猩) grow, they increase their ability for empathy(移情) — the ability to recognize emotions in others. Researchers say they learned this by watching some chimps yawn(打哈欠) when they see people yawn. Yawning involves opening the mouth while taking a long, deep breath of air. This is usually done when someone is tired or sleepy.
The lead researcher in the study was Elaine Madsen at Lund University in Sweden. She and her team studied 33 chimpanzees at a wildlife area in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. All of the chimps were between the ages of 13 months old and eight years old.
“It’s a really strange effect. It’s such a small thing, but most of us experience it. When we see or hear others yawn or just think about yawning or read about yawning, then we ourselves begin to yawn. So it’s something that most people are familiar with,” Madsen said. In humans, children begin to yawn when they see other people yawn starting at about the age of four. This shows they are beginning to develop empathy. This yawning response is strongest between people who know each other well.
Elaine Madsen and her team had the chimps watch them as they yawned, opened and closed their mouths in make-believe(假装的) yawns and rubbed their noses. The chimps only responded to the yawn, and only if they were at least five years old. Younger animals showed no sign of yawning response.
“Some people have looked at adult chimps and have shown them cartoons of other chimps’ yawning that sets off their yawning as well. The stimulus(刺激物), the yawn stimulus, can be very simple and still set off a yawn. We seem to have this very strong ability to copy the yawn, whether it’s from a cartoon or whether it’s another human that the animal sees,” Madsen said.
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