You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
What's that Mango?
So yesterday we talked about the real and imagined dangers of curiosity, which are often summed up in the famous phrase curiosity killed a cat. But there's at least one case where I found where curiosity not only saved the cat,
but the lives of its owners too. And this was back in twenty twenty one, when an Oregon couple, Mike and Sandy Martin, adopted a three year old Tortoiseshell cat named Lily, and one day they were playing with her on the floor of their living room, but she kept getting distracted by this brass valve next to the fireplace.
Lily had sniffed the valve before, and her owner is always just assumed it was attracted to the shiny metal or whatever, right, But on that afternoon, she just kept going back to it over and over again, and the behavior made the couple nervous, so they decided to follow Lily's instincts and lead, and they sniffed the valve themselves.
I mean, it's just a wholesome game of sniff the valve. We do this in the house all the time, but this.
Time it was not so enjoyable because the Martins both detected the faint scent of natural gas and the deadly leak was almost imperceptible and they actually never would have noticed it on their own, but Lily's curiosity tipped them off and it saved all their lives in the process.
Wow.
I mean, you know, I make a habit of never over complimenting a cat, like they get enough praise as it is. But I love that she turned that annoying idiom on its head like that. That's nice work.
Yeah.
My question though, was how did she know the gas was dangerous?
I don't think Lily did. In her mind, it was just this new, weird smell, and she kept going back to it because she wanted to learn more about it. And that kind of sensory exploration, whether it's sniffing, licking, rubbing, it's a telltale sign of curiosity in animals, and so is the frequency of their investigation. The more times an animal returns to a novel stimulus, the more curious they are about it. But that just scratches the surface here.
There's still a lot we don't know about animal curiosity, Like, how does curiosity differ across species? Does captivity play a role in how curious an animal is? And our animals actually curious? Are we just mistaking pure instinct for something deeper? Today we're taking a cross species approach to curiosity across the animal kingdom. So let's dive in.
Hey, their podcast listener is welcome to part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh hot Ticketter on the other side of that soundproof glass. Now, he got here early today. He's been doing this for a couple of hours. He's testing the curiosity of a green annull lizard. That is our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. But just look at him
over there. He's got all kinds of different objects spread out on his desk and he's keeping track of which ones the little guy likes best.
I mean, so far, it looks like it's very interested in the heat rock and the bag of crickets, but not so much in the harmonica, the bar watch or the biscuit.
No, the biscuit surprising. I thought it'd be interested in the biscuit.
The others.
You know, I get it for a lizard, but in that miniature copy of the Great Gasbee, it's not Ziema's action today.
Yeah, the lizard is probably more of a heavingway fat well.
Regardless, it was a valiant effort on Dylan's part, and his methods are actually pretty close to those used by professional animal researchers like you mentioned a minute ago. Exploratory behavior is thought to be an indicator of animal curios and the same is true for object manipulation. So one way to gauge an animal's curiosity is to present it with lots of different objects and see which ones, if any, can hold its attention the longest.
I mean, now I'm curious. So is this something you've ever tested on your own pets like Paul. Has Paul ever shown any curiosity?
It's one of those things that we sort of do it by default because you get, you know, this collection of so many different animal toys. Not surprisingly, Paul definitely likes to go back to the super loud, squeaky honky chicken thing that dislikes to go to town on it.
But not the actual chickens.
No, not the actual well no, if the chickens are out Paul is definitely curious there and wants to chase them. Fortunately has never gotten a hold of any of them. But yeah, how about you, I've.
Tried to think. I mean, I know, I had this pop named Colia for a bit, and he would always like sneak under my parents' bed and then just get lost for a long time, and we didn't We heard, we could hear him gnawing, we could hear him doing stuff, and we just assumed he was working on a masterpiece that we never got to.
I'm sure, I'm sure that was the case, Maga.
Well, before we got ahead of ourselves, we should talk a little bit about what it means for an animal to be curious, because it's not a perfect one to one with human curiosity. And in fact, some people aren't even convinced that animals can be curious, which is.
Just wild to me. Like, I'm assuming those are all people who've never walked a dog or played with a kitten before, right.
Yeah, definitely some unlucky people. So I think it's more a matter of perspective, Right, most people have observed the kind of behavior you're talking about, a dog wanting to sniff every single square inch of a park or a kid exploring all the nooks and crannies of a new home. But not everyone considers those actions to be true expressions of curiosity. Some would argue that animals are just acting
on instinct rather than a true subjective desire to learn something. Yeah, and you might think that split.
Only exists than the academic world. But we asked our good Palmetra to pull the good people of Brooklyn on whether they thought animals could be curious, and while most people did, it wasn't quite unanimous. So take a listen. Can dogs be curious?
Yes, in a general way, I think they can. Yeah, they're probably too curious, right, They want to sniff everything and it gets them into trouble.
I think my dog is extremely curious, and I think it's exciting that her curiosity comes primarily from scent, which is different from me. It makes me more curious about the world to understand it in a new way.
Mister bo Is, our four year old Border Collie Labrador retrievers.
Oh my god, that guys smells smells something.
He's gonna figure it out. What is it? Let me rolling it? And yes, very curious.
I have two cats. Everything's curiosity of you, Well, I mean sent sleep, and then two percent eat, and then three percent curiosity, which is a lot in a cat if they see any movement in the house, they're just like, what was that? And then they have to go check it out.
So I don't think animals are curious at all.
Everything is from instinct, but it misinterpreted it is curiosity.
So we heard that one lone voice of descent there at the end, but even the first speaker hedged a little by saying dogs could be curious in a general way, right, which I think brings us back to that big question, what does it mean for an animal to be curious? Well, to help answer that, I want to turn to the
work of a British neuroscientist named Richard Byrne. Now, he's a renowned scholar on the evolution of cognitive and social behavior, including the origins of distinctly human traits, and according to him, if we go by the most basic definition of curiosity, the motivation to seek out information even in the absence of clear goals like food or shelter, that we have to admit that some animals do display signs of curiosity.
We know they aren't solely concerned with basic needs like finding food or reproducing, because sometimes they'll also investigate strange objects, like seemingly just for the heck of it.
Yeah, but it's the last part that can really get us into trouble, right, because how can we say for sure? Then animal isn't exploring for a particular reason.
And that's the thing. They absolutely are exploring for a specific reason, and it's the same reason that humans do, and that's to gain new information. As Professor Burne explained in a twenty thirteen paper, once you think of animal behavior and information processing terms, the need for something like curiosity becomes obvious. Information is power. Information gathering is worth doing even if there are no obvious payoffs at the time, as long as getting it is not unduly costly or risky.
Storing information and memory is cheap, and you never know when a little knowledge may come in handy, such as when a psychologist suddenly deprives you of food and puts you back in that where you'd happen to notice some cheese earlier.
I see. So, just like for humans, there's an evolutionary advantage for curious animals because they can glean information from it that helps them better exploit their surroundings or even deal with potential threats I imagine, But I'm guessing that risk reward trade off keeps some animals from developing a sense of curiosity in the first place, because there are probably just some environments where gathering information would be too dangerous to justify.
Yeah, that's right. So more adaptable animals like rats, for instance, are prone to curiosity because they often live alongside humans and have evolved to handle that rapidly changing conditions that come with that, and they need to keep exploring and investigating them because it benefits them to stay on top of these things.
Yeah, we're always building new things and changing up the landscape, redirecting traffic, dropping food and weird places.
That's exactly right. But you know, for an isolated species that have their own little niches, it's just the opposite. Their environment is more or less static and there isn't as much new information that's worth acquiring, so it makes sense for them to explore less and just kind of stay in their lane. But an animal's ecology isn't the
only factor in determining its level of curiosity. Cognitive ability plays a role as well, by determining how a situation is perceived and what kind of information can be derived from it. As Professor Burne puts it, with more advanced perceptual and brain processes, there's more to discover. With more advanced motor abilities, more can be done. Inevitably, these species with limited perceptions, small brains, and restricted ability to affect their environment are not going to show as many signs
of curiosity. So what animals are curious about? How long their curiosity lasts maybe revealing of their information processing abilities.
So high functioning animals like chimps, dolphins, octopuses, those are animals that are going to be way more curious than something like a snail, for instance. But is there also a difference in what these animals are curious about? Like dolphins world is completely different from that of a housecat, so I'd imagine they'd find different things to be intrigued by.
Right Well, Generally speaking, curious animals are interested in the unknown, like places they've never been, objects they've never encountered, and individuals that they've never met. But there is some variation based on the kind of information they're equipped to process. For example, a rat and a maze would be curious about different objects in different locations cheese, water, etc.
You know.
Scientists call this what wear memory, and it's basically the starting point for learning through curiosity. But a little higher up on the cognitive ladder are animals that possess what
whear win memory. So take hummingbirds for instance. They can remember all sorts of things about the flowers from which they feed, including the color location, even when they were last visited, so keeping track of the time helps them avoid wasting energy by visiting a flower that hasn't actually had time to produce more nectar.
That's pretty amazing because I assume they're doing that on the strength of their own personal memories, right, hummingbirds don't instinctally know to wait three days or whatever before revisiting the same flower. They're just making judgment calls based on what they've noticed in their own lives.
Yeah.
I mean, we can't say that for certain, since hummingbirds don't have the ability to communicate with this, but it does seem to be the case, and there are lots of other examples to support this theory. For instance, some species of monkeys will actually use the weather to predict whens the right time to revisit a fruit tree. If the weather's been warm and sunny in between visits, they're more likely to try their luck, you know, But if it's been raining all week, they probably know it's not
worth the effort, and if that weren't impressive enough. There's evidence that social animals can also be curious about individuals, so this would be the what where, when? Who memory. The main example of this is wild elephants, who often split up to forage across great distances, and researchers have found that highly dispersed elephants will investigate the dung or urine they come across in their travels as a way to keep track of the locations of out of sight family members.
That is both disgusting and kind of sweet.
Yeah, right, sniffing dung to keep your family together. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
Yeah. Well, uh, clearly there's a lot of beneficial information that animals can learn through curiosity, and especially if they have the brain power to keep track of who, what, where and when? But I am curious, like, what about an animal species that can also throw something like how or why into the mix? Right, Like, do you think there's some weird bug out there wondering how the flowers.
Grow, and I think in that scenario, I hope not. I think you know, I don't like the idea of a syentient insect, but much less one that understands photosynthesis. I don't know about you.
Yeah, I mean I don't even understand photosynthesis. I feel like it's crazy.
That's why I called it out. But going back to your broader question, it's tough to say like humans are curious about why things happen or how stuff works, because we're able to recognize when something we perceive doesn't align with our expectations of that magician pull the rabbit out of his hat? Why is my kid asking to skip dessert? Those situations break from what we would expect, and we feel a poll to find out why or how that
might be. But when it comes to other animals, they seem to lack the ability or maybe the inclination, to question root causes.
Like we do.
Well. As tempted as I am to take your word for it, there's a recent shakeup in animal science that's actually been giving me some pause. It has to do with past misjudgments that humans have made about animal capabilities, and it's got me thinking that animal curiosity may not be as different from ours as we like to think. After we take a quick break, i'm gonna tell you all about it, so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to
part time Genius. It is day three of our week long journey through the mysterious jungles of curiosity, and if you've enjoyed the trip so far, please let us know by dropping a line to High Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi, Geniuses at gmail dot com. You can also give us a call on our hotline at three oh two, four oh five five nine two five, or you can come find us at Instagram or Blue Sky. No matter
which route you take, we always love hearing from you. Okay, Well, so before the break, we were talking about the different levels of curiosity that animals possess based on their abilities to process information, and it was starting to look like even the peak of that spectrum is still several notches below human curiosity.
Right, But you said there's some big shakeup that's throwing this all into question.
Yeah, so that is something that flew under most people's radar. But in twenty twenty four, dozens of leading scientists signed something called quote the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, and the gist of it was to announce that we now have strong scientific evidence that birds and other mammals experience consciousness or are self aware, and that there's quote a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians,
and fishes, and many invertebrates, including at minimum cephalopod molus, decapod, crustaceans, and insects.
If you're telling me there's some weird bug that wonders how flowers grow, I swear I'm walking out of this studio.
I don't think you will.
It's like a throw in a thread every once in a while.
But you don't have to worry because the declaration didn't get into those kinds of specifics. The point of it was to call for more ethical policies governing animal research and welfare, and it was in light of those recent findings. And I've got to tell you, I looked into some of the studies myself, and they really do call a lot of things into question, So like what exactly, Well, for hundreds of years now, humans have been trying to
draw a hard line between ourselves and other animals. In the sixteen hundreds, for example, the French philosophy for Renee de Karte argued that animals were nothing but quote material automata, so basically biological machines or robots. He didn't think they had souls or consciousness, or even that they were capable of basic feelings like joy or fear, and that kind
of thinking prevailed well into the twentieth century. Prominent animal psychologists embraced behaviorism and confined their research only to observable behavior. Like Descartes, they believed that animals lacked any sense of self awareness, and that anyone who thought otherwise was just being sentimental and you know, projecting human attributes onto lowlier species.
But that hasn't been the case for a while, right, because I'm thinking of Jane Goodall, who of course passed away recently, and she definitely didn't subscribe to the school of thought that you're talking about.
That's true. But by the time she started her research, which was obviously groundbreaking, it was the nineteen sixties and scholars had come up with a laundry list of behaviors and abilities that were supposedly exclusive to humans, and tool making was one of them. Symbolic language, planning for the future, emotional responses. These were all held up as concrete proof
of our uniqueness as humans. But one by one, the work of Jane Goodall and her fellow primatologists disproved each and every one of those presumptions.
Yeah.
Actually, just read this retrospective on her first big breakthrough back in nineteen sixty and she was deep in the forest of Tanzania when she witnessed a chimpanzee using blades of grass and twigs to pull termites out of a.
Nest, which is obviously pretty clever for a soulless meat machine. But what's even more amazing is that Goodall's discovery finally helped free modern science from the restrictive grip of behaviorism. As a result, there's been all kinds of research into animal cognition over the past sixty years or so, and that's why all those leading scientists felt the need to make that big pronouncement about animal consciousness last year. So many new things have come to light that challenge our
preconceived notion of intellectual and even moral superiority. For instance, we now know that apes, monkeys, and elephants more in the loss of those they formed a bond with. And even more surprisingly, some smaller brained animals, including donkeys and ferrets, have been observed displaying grief. That's a depth of emotion that many scientists never would have ascribed to animals in the past.
Yeah, and what about those signs of self awareness that the authors mention, Like they said they found evidence in birds and even fish, right.
Yeah, the fish studies are some of my favorites, partially because of how unexpected they are. People have a tendency to think of fish as this primitive subclass of animals, and you always hear things like fish can't feel pain like other conscious animals, But it turns out that that
is completely untrue. A few years back, researchers found that when a lab zebra fish receives a painful injection, it'll leave its favorite habitat, the one with all the nice rocks and vegetation, to visit a boring, empty habitat where the water has been infused with a pain reliever.
Kind of like the fish equivalent of leaving the house to go to the doctor's office. Like, I'd to actually say, that's a pretty compelling case for self awareness, right, But tell me, what else you got?
Well, the one I really love is this twenty nineteen study on the cleaner wrass fish. One of the loftiest benchmarks for cognition across species is the ability to recognize your own reflection in a mirror, and only a handful of animals have been able to pass the so called mirror test, and nearly all of them are large brain mammals.
One of the most notable exceptions is a bird called the Eurasian magpie, which first aced the test back in two thousand and eight, but the most recent graduate was the humble cleaner rass.
I guess this is my old human bias talking here, but it's pretty shocking that a tiny little fish could match the wits with great apes and killer whales. Like how they pulled that off.
The fish haven't shared their secret, but here's how the study went. Ten fish replacing a tank with a covered mirror, and while none of them were interested at first, once the cover was removed, seven of the fish immediately started attacking its thinking that the image was a rival fish.
Okay, so not a strong start here.
No, but here's the thing. After a few days, the fish calmed down and began exhibiting these strange behaviors in front of the mirror. First they swam upside down, which is something that had never been seen in the species before. It's remarkable. Then the fish started hanging out in front of the mirror for long periods, you know, kind of examining their own bodies and checking themselves out. I actually
find that really amazing that that happened. Like, maybe swimming upside down was kind of an experiment, and when they saw the mirror fish doing it, they realized they were actually looking at themselves, Like, is that the idea? Yeah,
that's the theory. So to confirm it, the researchers actually mark the fish with a brown pigment beneath the skin, and it was purposely made to resemble a parasite that often targets the species, And when the fish spotted the mark in the mirror, some of them tried to run it off. I mean, again, this is genuinely shocking. I never would have thought a fish could make all those connections and then remember them from one day to the next. Yeah, it feels like a pretty clear case of learning by
way of curiosity. And even though the cleaner rass is the only fish so far to pass the mirror test. There is evidence of curiosity in other aquatic species. For example, going back to zebrafish, there was a study in twenty twenty two where researchers introduced thirty different objects into six tanks of zebrafish. Each object was presented for a ten minute period and during that time, each group's response was recorded.
And so what were the researchers looking for exactly?
So there were two main criteria. One was how long it took the fish to approach the objects, and then the other was how long they spent investigating each one. But the team also kept an eye on the social dynamics of the fish, like how the fish interacted with each other in the presence of these objects, as well as their diving behavior, which is a common stress response
in zebrafish. And while I don't want to get two into the weeds with the data, I will tell you that the fish were highly interested in the white shell and pink spongeball, but not at all interested in the plastic pagoda or the purple cup.
Yeah, I can't say I blame it, Like purple cup sounds like a snooze fest.
I'm not totally boring.
I'm assuming the fish's object preference wasn't the only takeaway from this though, right, Yeah, the real.
Payoff was the confirmation that fish are indeed attracted to novel objects, and that they find some to be more interesting than others, just like terrestrial animals do.
Right.
But beyond that, there were also some startling discoveries about the potential benefits of curiosity to an animal's well being. The researchers found that zebrafish tended to fight less during the object presentations and also exhibited far fewer stress responses.
That is really interesting. So having something new to explore not only boosted the fish's cooperation, it also kind of mellowed them out.
Yeah, they stopped engaging in fight club, right, But the team summed it up this way quote, it is possible that zebrafish, like many other species, benefit from activities that engage their cognitive abilities and preferences. This research builds on our understanding of the determinants and consequence of curiosity across species and opens new avenues of investigation regarding the role the exploration and learning play in the lives and welfare of fishes.
This is just super interesting to me.
All right.
Well, in honor of the zebra fish study, here's today's listener activity. Grab an assortment of objects of various sizes, shapes, textures, and colors, then present them one at a time. Do any animals you have handy, preferably a pet, but a wild one. We'll do in a pinch, so as long as it's friendly, of course. Now keep track of how long the animal investigates the object. Leave us a comment in our Instagram or blue Sky detailing your results. Now, for an extra contest entry, make a video of your
experiment and tag us. The deadline is Sunday, October twenty sixth. We'll pick one common at random to win an official part Time Genius Prize pack. All the details and links are in the show notes and on our social media.
Co man, I really can't wait to see how this goes. Yeah, how weird would it be if a purple cop turned out to be the least appealing object across the board?
Well, you know this about me. Purple is definitely my favorite color, so I'd be pretty pretty upset about that, But not that surprising.
Right, Well, I know we've got to take one more quick break, But when we come back, we'll look at the surprising impact that captivity has had on animals curiosity. Please do not go what.
Welcome back to part time genius. All right, mango, What if I told you that life in captivity makes some animals more curious than their wild counterparts.
I would say that the people at Big Zoo had gotten to you, because that flies in the face of every board of tears line I have ever crossed paths with Big Zoo.
I like that some zoo animals do seem pretty checked out in their enclosures. I will definitely give you that. But there's mounting evidence, at least in some cases, that life in captivity can actually heighten an animal's curious Now, the largest support from this comes from a team of primatologists at the University of Zurich who spent several years studying orangutans.
Now.
This was both in rehabilitation centers and in the wilds of the Sumatra and Rainforest.
Now.
Part of their job involved setting up delicate climate sensors in the rainforest canopy, and the team was amazed to find that the orangutans who lived there showed zero interest in the strange equipment. This was a far cry from the behavior of orangutans in captivity, who would routinely rifle through trash cans, ransax stock rooms, even steel laundry that
had been hung out to dry. Now, the disparity seemed to suggest that something about captivity had made the animals more curious than they would have been in the wild. So to test that theory, one of the team members built a fake orangutan nest in the sumatrain canopy. She then filled them with these man made objects, including a Swiss flag and plastic fruit, and she set up motion activated cameras to capture the wild apes reactions.
And I'm guessing they weren't that interested.
They could and care less macow over the course of several months dozens of while the orangutans walk straight past the items without giving them a second look. But here's the crazy part. When another team member repeated the experiment in multiple zoos, she got the exact opposite result. The captive orangutans completely trash the nest in a matter of minutes. Now, obviously that's not what we would call constructive curiosity, but research also shows that curious orangutans are better at problem
solving than they're less curious peers. So, just like with the zebrafish, there was a tangible benefit to seeking out new things and reveling and exploration.
Do we have any idea why that was the case, Like why would living in captivity make them more curious? And also why would it improve their mental abilities? Like it feels pretty counterintuitive.
Well, the research is gone going on this, but the prevailing theory right now is that the animals close contact with humans unlocked their latent capacity for curiosity, and in cases when and that exposure happened at an early age, it also boosted their problem solving skills later on as adults.
I assume the controlled environment played a factor in that too, right, Like, there are no natural predators to worry about Nazoo, There is no need to track down your next meal. That kind of security takes off the pressure an animal might feel in the wild, and just like humans, right like, it might free them up to explore their space owned skills they otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to acquire, right Like, it frees up a lot of mental ability.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know the really cool thing is this phenomenon isn't limited to orangutans. So other researchers have found similar improvements in the problem solving skills of other animals. They've done this with hyenas, with birds, with monkeys, and so while life in captivity isn't without its drawbacks, it can sometimes provide this, you know, pretty rich, more fulfilling life for animals prone to curiosity.
I love the idea of like a super curious hyena.
Right, yeah, it's sort of scared about that idea.
I also love the idea that one animal can help unleash the curiosity of another. You know, that we can make animals more curious just by being close to them. It's kind of how I imagined our own evolution went right, Like, our prehistoric ancestors lived apart in small family units, and that system worked well enough for us to develop basic tools upright posture. But we didn't really invent the good stuff like art and language until hundreds of thousands of
years later, when humans started living closer together. And this happened through community, right, really large communities, and that close proximity and the security, really, the security it afforded may have been the secret sauce that propelled us up that next wrong of the evolutionary ladder. So who knows, maybe we can have the same effect on a different species, like orangutans, for for instance.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if there's one thing this conversation has taught me, it's to stop underestimating animals and humans have spent way too long focusing on our perceived differences and feeling threatened by these inescapable similarity. It's time we start celebrating things we have in common, like curiosity and apparently this mutual disdain for purple cups.
The more we talk about it, the more convinced I am that Charles Darwin had it right all along, because he wrote way back in the eighteen hundreds that the difference in intellect and emotion between man and animals is only a matter of degree, not of kind. So you know, while there may not be a non human animal that wonders how and why today, if you give the right time and the right conditions, you know, maybe you wouldn't rule it out.
Yeah, good old dar When ahead of the curve as usual, I think it's a good place to leave things for today, but be sure to tune in tomorrow, or we'll be talking about how curiosity changes over the course of a lifetime and how we can keep it from atrophying in old age.
Yeah, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and blue sky at part Time Genius so you can keep up with our listener activities and our giveaways. Special thanks to Mitra Banshahi, who I absolutely love for collecting field tape for us, and from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaetikler and researched by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and uy Me Shoy. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. O