Boring experiment

You reported in last week's Times Higher that some apes "were observed to yawn more after watching a video recording of a yawning chimp" ("It's very evolved of us to ape a yawn", March 12).

If you apply Ockham's razor rather than this evidencing of the contagiousness of yawns, isn't it at least equally probable that they found the video a little, erm, boring, and responded accordingly?

Robin MacPherson
School of Design and Media Arts
Napier University