Comment on *Yawn*
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 months agoIsn’t it a social signal, apebrain talking?
It seems like it helps the brain switch modes (from low activity to high and from high activity to low). So yawning could help prepare the brain to pay attention to something important, as well as wind down for the evening. Hence both morning and evening yawns.
The contagious aspect could be as simple as “Oh, you’re changing modes? I should get ready to do the same.”
Are there any other involuntary social signals?
….erections?
I do prefer to let my erection do the talking.
^ -me to the police officer who pulled me over and asked if I knew how fast I was going.
Name checks out
… anyone who is naturally expressive and has genuine, authentic responses that go against whatever current sociocultural norms are?
Hey, popular person told a dumb, offensive joke, that validates my internal insecurities by projecting derision outward onto some kind of minority group!
(Face twists up into disgust, shock, and maybe pity)
WTF is wrong with you, popular person is funny! We hate you now!
Body language in general.
Dogs wag their tails in order to spread their happy pheromones by waving furiously. They unconsciously want everyone to know they are having a good time. When they are scared, they tuck their tail between their legs in order not to spread their stress pheromones by moving the air around their glands.
its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Solitary animals yawn too. Don’t if they can catch yawns, or how to test it.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Supplying oxygen to brain before task, reused in ape for social?
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
My entirely uneducated guess would be that its some, very basal, ancient, basically gasping compulsion, that… just never quite fully got patched out by the subsequent tens of millions of years of evolution.
Sort of the behavioral version of vestigal limb, way down at some fundamental nervous system level.