Contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise? (podcast 66)

Contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise — or rather, lack of contagious yawning in the red-footed turtle, becomes a matter of high drama in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.

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This week, Marc Abrahams  — with dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg — tells about:

Contagious Yawning in Tortoises? — “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise Geochelone carbonaria,” Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl, and Ludwig Huber, Current Zoology 57 (4): 2011, pp. 477–84. This research led to an Ig Nobel Prize in 2011. Here’s a photo of Anna Wilkinson and a research tortoise: 
Contagious Yawning in Other Animals? — “Some Comparative Aspects of Yawning in Betta splendens, Homo sapiens, Panthera leo, and Papio sphinx,” Ronald Baenninger, Journal of Comparative Psychology 101 (4), 1987, pp. 349–54.
Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans — “Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans,” Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist, Human Nature 13 (3): 2002, pp. 383–8. This research led to an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.

The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week.

The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, on the CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes and Spotify).