What is a yawn?

Depending on your view, we are either blessed or cursed by cats. We have a number of cats, with some of them being yard ornaments, but there are some that are real hunters. We have some that most every afternoon or evening will wander out in the pastures and come back carrying a mouse or gopher or mole. The mother cats will bring back a trophy to share with their little ones, while the males bring it back for their own enjoyment.

One of the cats is Kitty Girl, one of my high tunnel cats. She is probably 5 or 6 or maybe 7 years old. Who knows, she may be 8. Time flies by, so I'm not sure. We had her spayed last spring so she isn't trying to train a bunch of baby cats. She can sleep in or get up early or go out on the town and enjoy life. One thing she must really enjoy is nap time.

When we get her up in the morning, she will climb up on the four-wheeler and want some pets. But the whole time she is getting pets, she is yawning. One yawn right after another. She can't quit yawning. The only other cat that I have noticed this on is BB. She will wake up from a nap and have to yawn. It made me wonder if just cats and humans yawn? I think I have seen horses yawn. If they weren't yawning, they fooled me. Do cows? I don't have a clue. An article from Wikipedia states that yawning can be observed in chimpanzees, dogs, cats, birds and reptiles.

Wikipedia states that "A yawn is a reflex consisting of the simultaneous inhalation of air and the stretching of the eardrums, followed by an exhalation of breath." It seems like someone else's yawn will cause me to yawn and vice versa. I'll call someone, and we'll be talking along, and I'll begin to yawn over the phone, and I can hear them yawning as well. So a sound can trigger a yawn. I know seeing a yawn can trigger a yawn. Be darned if me writing about yawning caused me to yawn just now. I know BB's yawn will cause me to yawn or vice versa. Same with Kitty Girl. Me writing this and you reading it might bring on a yawn? Did it?

So why do we yawn? According to Wikipedia some believe that when our blood has too much carbon dioxide in it, we need to increase the oxygen level which yawning does. Another belief is that yawning helps one to increase his alertness. At times we will yawn before some great event or such. Some feel that yawning helps us to control our brain temperature. There are other logical-sounding reasons why we yawn, but at the end of the day we might conclude no one knows for sure. This might just be a good reason to spend a boo koo bunch of money trying to find out. But honestly at the end of the day most of us don't care why we yawn. We just yawn.

Some things happen for some reason, and it would be nice to know and appease our curiosity, but if we don't ever know, the world won't end. Kind of like old dogs will have to make one or two circles before they lie down. It's like they are laying down the grass where they are going to lie down. That's what I figure anyway. Or an old cow will walk in a zig zag line. She will kind of walk left for a few steps and then walk right for a few steps. I always figure that because their bellies are wide, they zig left to see behind them from that side. And then when they zag right they see behind them on that side. Kind of a survival thing. In the movie "Red October," the Russian subs would periodically shut down their engines and turn to the left or right so they can see behind their own sub. The Americans called this a "Crazy Ivan." Same with an old cow. These are what I'd call full automatic actions where we are just naturally wired that way.

When I was attending McCook Junior College I took quite a few chemistry courses, and it was drilled in me to cross my Z's so one could tell them from 2's. It's been 50 years ago, and I still cross my Z's. If you spend time in a chemistry lab, you will gently waft a smell to your nose with your hand rather than just sticking your nose over a vile to check out the smell. All it takes is sniffing a vial of acid, and you will remember how you should have gently wafted the smell with your hand.

From the time I could walk, it was ingrained in me to get on a horse from the left side. You saddled the horse from the left side. Always. The steering wheel is on the left side on American cars. So even though it really doesn't matter which side of my tractors I get on, I pretty much have to get on from the left side. These are habits that are ingrained in us until they are a real habit.

A lot of what we do is a habit from somewhere in our past, some good and some OK and some not good at all. Seems like I read somewhere it takes six weeks to stop a bad habit and change our behavior, but it also takes six weeks to begin a good behavior and for it to become a good habit. This is a good time of the year to stop some of the things we do and start some of the things we need to be doing.

Happy New Year and to many more.