  The electromagnetic decay processes of excited hyperon states are a very
sensitive probe of the structure of hyperons. We will argue that the recent
measurements of electromagnetic decay rates indicate that the wave functions of
the hyperon ground states should contain sizeable components of excited quark
states (configuration mixing). Flavor-SU(3) is a broken symmetry and it appears
that the hyperon wave functions should preferably be written in a $uds$-basis,
where only the light $u$ and $d$ quarks are symmetrized, and not in the usual
SU(6)-basis.
