Yawning

[bcholmes]

I was reading something about Haiti the other day -- it reminded me of something that struck me as odd while I was there.

If you yawn while you're in Haiti, people will assume you're hungry, rather than tired. I guess I kinda thought of yawning as a physiological reaction to tiredness. If so, I would'a thought that the interpretation of the yawn would be universal. Not so, apparently.

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Huh, I always figured that yawning was a physiological response to not having enough oxygen in your lungs, which was tied to tiredness because you weren't breathing as deeply when you were weary.

Putting on my wild-ass theory hat, I'll guess that it's actually triggered by not having enough oxygen in your brain, and perhaps Haitians aren't as iron-fortified as the rest of us in the Western Hemisphere so they'd tie it to food instead of muscle strength.