Overview

• More than half of the 14 chimpanzees at Spain’s Fundació Mona sanctuary yawned when a humanoid robot displayed realistic yawns.
• The primates’ response to the robot matched their reactions to yawns from fellow chimpanzees.
• Researchers were surprised by the intensity of the response, which also included increased resting behaviors such as nesting and lying down.
• Researchers led by Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni at Spain’s Fundació Mona sanctuary published the findings on June 5, 2025, in Scientific Reports.
• The results suggest shared movement-based perception mechanisms and could inform future human-robot interaction designs.