Tyler Fugazzie

Some say the world is one long unbroken chain of yawning. Historical memory is fuzzy on when the first one took place but it was likely thousands of years ago. Possibly millions. We haven’t stopped yawning since and we’re unlikely to stop anytime soon. In case you were wondering, stretching and yawning at the same time, a combination worth trying if you haven’t yet had the pleasure, is known as pandiculation.

We’ve yawned for so long we have some tips to remember for optimized yawning.

Cover your mouth when you yawn if you want to prevent your soul from escaping. Cover your mouth when you yawn if you want to prevent evil spirits from entering. Cover your mouth when you yawn so no one knows how bored you are.

Another tip is to tally each time you yawn, especially when the hours feel extremely long. I once notched many yawns in a matter of minutes. I stopped tracking them once I realized how inconsequential it was.

But there are some yawning records worth breaking.

Bella, a Pomeranian from Wisconsin, holds a Guinness World Record for the longest recorded yawn at 23 minutes and 8 seconds. For humans, David Rickert achieved a 6-minute-and-46-second yawn on May 27, 1994, though my sources are dubious on this fact. It’s unclear what the record is for most yawns in a day, or a minute, or any other unit of time. Our best guess is that it happened during a business meeting or a webinar demonstration of a completely unnecessary software product.