Scanning the comics in The Day, my gaze happened upon a picture of Garfield the cat yawning a huge yawn, and it made me yawn! A cartoon cat made me yawn! Is there no limit to the human phenomenon they call “contagious yawning?” It’s bizarre, baffling, and befuddling to me.

Contagious yawning is mysterious. You could be walking in a crowd of strangers on the street, or sitting in a theater, and if you see somebody yawn, you will yawn. It puzzles me that perfect strangers can make us yawn. But it’s not their fault because somebody else obviously made them yawn first.

Every minute of every day, all around the world, people are making other people yawn. Yawns circle throughout humankind day after day, for no known reason, often simply because someone saw somebody else yawn. It’s crazy.

But do we even have to see another person yawn before they make us yawn? Maybe, just maybe, when we’re alone and we yawn, it’s because somebody in the vicinity, unseen but within our yawn zone, has yawned, making us yawn. Like the next door neighbor, or somebody driving by or walking their dog past the house.

Science has proven yawns are contagious but the reason remains elusive. Nobody even knows why we yawn in the first place.

Researchers at the University of Vienna declared yawning was linked to warm air temperature and has something to do with cooling the brain.

I don’t buy the brain cooling theory. My brain’s not air-cooled and my wife assures me that I’ve never been in danger of cerebral overheating.

Our own University of Connecticut studied yawning in 2010, but the biggest study to date was done in 2014 by Dr. Elizabeth Cirulli, Ph.D, and assistant professor in medicine at Duke University.

She confirmed that contagious yawning is a real, provable thing, but she couldn’t identify why we do it.

Some scientists think contagious yawning has something to do with empathy, some innate need to identify with other humans. I believe my cartoon cat incident refutes that idea.

In 2013, scientists in Zurich, Switzerland, discovered that yawns light up the “inferior frontal gyrus,” part of the brain’s “mirror neuron network.” When we watch someone yawn, the aptly named mirror neurons simulate the action in our minds, our mouth flops open and we suck in gobs of air.

Many people can yawn just by thinking about yawns, and research shows that even reading about yawns can make us yawn.

In fact, writing this column, I found myself yawning many times while thinking about yawning and imagining people yawning, especially that fat orange cat with the big yawning mouth that started all this trouble.

Some think boredom can instigate yawning. I’ll bet hundreds of you reading this column are yawning right now. In fact, I’m yawning right now just picturing you yawning.

I tried faking yawns to make my wife yawn. Didn’t work. But if I really yawn, she’ll yawn too. Our brain recognizes a yawning imposter. Mysterious.

Neuroscientists in Italy studied 21 baboons and found they passed yawns all around.

Dr. Cirulli concludes that “contagious yawning is a phenomenon that only occurs in humans and chimpanzees as a response to hearing, seeing, or even thinking about yawning.” Strange, indeed.

I asked my wife if she thought Garfield’s cartoon yawn could make a baboon yawn. “It already has,” she said.

John Steward, who lives in Waterford, can be reached at tossinglines@gmail.com or visit johnsteward.online.