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In the BBC reality show "The Celebrity Traitors," the Traitors—James Acaster, Maya Jama and King Kenny—were set an unusual challenge: murder a Faithful by making them yawn. Their plan was to bore their target into yawning, then deliver the line "Am I boring you?" to seal the murder.

The task plays on one of yawning's strangest features: its ability to spread from one person to another. Seeing someone yawn can be enough to trigger a yawn of your own, sometimes even when you are not tired. But would the same trick work if the yawn were deliberately faked?

Yawning is found across the animal kingdom and scientists believe that the behavior dates back hundreds of millions of years. Humans yawn, but so do apes, dogs, horses, reptiles, birds and even fish, although contagious yawning—catching a yawn from another individual—is found in far fewer species.

Why do yawns spread, and what does this tell us about how we respond to other people? Researchers have several theories, from social bonding to the brain mechanisms involved in recognizing and copying others' actions. These may help explain whether a convincing fake yawn can fool us—and whether the Traitors' task was as easy as it sounds.

One idea is known as the social bonding hypothesis . Humans and many social animals often copy each other's behavior without realizing it.

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