You can never get too tired for yawning animals, though watching them exercise their jaws can be one infectious endeavor. These dozen dozing denizens of the animal kingdom pick up where Zoo Snooze: 12 Jaw-Dropping Animal Yawns leaves off – bet you can’t get through both without yawning at least once yourself!
Yawning Seal
Seals and other such marine mammals are some of the planet’s most acrobatic and energetic creatures… that is, when they’re in the swim chasing down a meal. When making like landlubbers, on the other fin, seals and sea lions start feeling the weight of slumber in a big way.
No need to blubber, seals that move sluggishly on land still look as happy as clams. Maybe it has to do with the warm sun beating down, soft sand (or cool rocks) beneath, and the company of one’s equally sated companions instilling an ultra-relaxed mood. Life’s a beach? It sure is, and in a good way!
Yawning Lizard
Y’wanna Iguana yawn? You got it! As a bonus we’ll throw in a couple of gecko yawns and a monitor yawn just to be nice. Why do lizards yawn, anyway? It can’t be to show what big teeth they have – geckos barely have any teeth to speak of.
Being cold-blooded creatures, lizards adjust their metabolism to suit the ambient conditions… living in the moment is their way of life. What looks like yawning may simply be an attempt to charge their tissues with oxygen as a precursor to some strenuous activity like selling us car insurance.
Yawning Horse
It’s said you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but when a majestic mare or maned stallion lets out a yawn, there’s basically nowhere else TO look. Horses yawn early and often, and it seems they do it to relax themselves whether they’re tired or not. Next time you see a horse yawning, keep watching: some say horses usually yawn three times in succession.
Ponies yawn too, though maybe it’s just because they’re a little hoarse.
Yawning Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog’s got nuthin’ on the real deal: actual Pygmy Hedgehogs are relatively quiet, slow-moving, peaceful creatures. Of course, you’d be placid and languid too if your back was studded with an array of off-putting spines.
Pygmy Hedgehogs are popular pets in those states which allow the practice, and they quickly endear themselves to their human owners. Just don’t expect a whirlwind of activity from your spiky new pal: Hedgehogs seem to love sleeping more than anything and they’re not at all afraid to show it.
Yawning Bear
If any animal’s synonymous with sleeping, it’s our hibernating hero the Bear. If snoozing half the year isn’t enough to give our shaggy pals automatic membership in the slumber party, maybe a nice warm bear-hug will change your mind.
Black, Brown, Grizzly and Polar – bears are champion sleepers with yawns to match. Let those formidable choppers be fair warning, however, that bears may love sleeping but they hate being disturbed whether they’re awake or not.
Yawning Frog
Besides making a great band name, Yawning Frogs are a rare phenomenon that demands exceptional patience (and copious bug spray) from nature photographers: if YOU yawn, you might miss ITS yawn.
Frogs may appear to be yawning but are they really? Some say that by stretching its jaws as wide as possible, the frog in question is loosening its skin in preparation for molting. To others, it just means it’s hungry. Only the photographer knows for sure if a jaw-dropping toad is merely sleepy or making to snare a meal via its quick & sticky tongue. Either way, you can’t deny it’s a ribbeting spectacle.
