Did You Know?

The average human will yawn around 250,000 times over the course of his life.

 

We do it when we're tired, when we're bored or when we're hungry; parachutists have been seen to do it before a jump, and research has even suggested a link between yawning and sexual arousal.

However, the exact causes and function of yawning remain a mystery, and one that until recently was surprisingly under-documented in the scientific world.

Now a French family doctor, Olivier Walusinski, has published what is billed as the first ever textbook on the subject, "The Mystery of Yawning in Physiology and Disease" -- a collection of the latest research on this baffling and uncontrollable behavior.
There are a number of theories, but there's no formal proof as yet of why we yawn.

What is known is that the average human will yawn around 250,000 times over the course of his life, and that babies in the womb do it from as early as 12-14 weeks, suggesting it plays an important neurophysiological role.