Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that Mango?
Speaker 1: So yesterday we talked about the real and imagined dangers
Speaker 1: of curiosity, which are often summed up in the famous
Speaker 1: phrase curiosity killed a cat. But there's at least one
Speaker 1: case where I found where curiosity not only saved the cat,
Speaker 1: but the lives of its owners too. And this was
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty one, when an Oregon couple, Mike
Speaker 1: and Sandy Martin, adopted a three year old Tortoiseshell cat
Speaker 1: named Lily, and one day they were playing with her
Speaker 1: on the floor of their living room, but she kept
Speaker 1: getting distracted by this brass valve next to the fireplace.
Speaker 1: Lily had sniffed the valve before, and her owner is
Speaker 1: always just assumed it was attracted to the shiny metal
Speaker 1: or whatever, right, But on that afternoon, she just kept
Speaker 1: going back to it over and over again, and the
Speaker 1: behavior made the couple nervous, so they decided to follow
Speaker 1: Lily's instincts and lead, and they sniffed the valve themselves.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just a wholesome game of sniff the valve.
Speaker 2: We do this in the house all the time, but this.
Speaker 1: Time it was not so enjoyable because the Martins both
Speaker 1: detected the faint scent of natural gas and the deadly
Speaker 1: leak was almost imperceptible and they actually never would have
Speaker 1: noticed it on their own, but Lily's curiosity tipped them
Speaker 1: off and it saved all their lives in the process.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I make a habit of never
Speaker 2: over complimenting a cat, like they get enough praise as
Speaker 2: it is. But I love that she turned that annoying
Speaker 2: idiom on its head like that. That's nice work.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My question though, was how did she know the gas
Speaker 2: was dangerous?
Speaker 1: I don't think Lily did. In her mind, it was
Speaker 1: just this new, weird smell, and she kept going back
Speaker 1: to it because she wanted to learn more about it.
Speaker 1: And that kind of sensory exploration, whether it's sniffing, licking, rubbing,
Speaker 1: it's a telltale sign of curiosity in animals, and so
Speaker 1: is the frequency of their investigation. The more times an
Speaker 1: animal returns to a novel stimulus, the more curious they
Speaker 1: are about it. But that just scratches the surface here.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot we don't know about animal curiosity, Like,
Speaker 1: how does curiosity differ across species? Does captivity play a
Speaker 1: role in how curious an animal is? And our animals
Speaker 1: actually curious? Are we just mistaking pure instinct for something deeper?
Speaker 1: Today we're taking a cross species approach to curiosity across
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listener is welcome to part Time Genius.
Speaker 2: I'm Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my
Speaker 2: good friend mangesh hot Ticketter on the other side of
Speaker 2: that soundproof glass. Now, he got here early today. He's
Speaker 2: been doing this for a couple of hours. He's testing
Speaker 2: the curiosity of a green annull lizard. That is our
Speaker 2: friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. But just look at him
Speaker 2: over there. He's got all kinds of different objects spread
Speaker 2: out on his desk and he's keeping track of which
Speaker 2: ones the little guy likes best.
Speaker 1: I mean, so far, it looks like it's very interested
Speaker 1: in the heat rock and the bag of crickets, but
Speaker 1: not so much in the harmonica, the bar watch or
Speaker 1: the biscuit.
Speaker 2: No, the biscuit surprising. I thought it'd be interested in
Speaker 2: the biscuit.
Speaker 1: The others.
Speaker 2: You know, I get it for a lizard, but in
Speaker 2: that miniature copy of the Great Gasbee, it's not Ziema's
Speaker 2: action today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the lizard is probably more of a heavingway fat well.
Speaker 2: Regardless, it was a valiant effort on Dylan's part, and
Speaker 2: his methods are actually pretty close to those used by
Speaker 2: professional animal researchers like you mentioned a minute ago. Exploratory
Speaker 2: behavior is thought to be an indicator of animal curios
Speaker 2: and the same is true for object manipulation. So one
Speaker 2: way to gauge an animal's curiosity is to present it
Speaker 2: with lots of different objects and see which ones, if any,
Speaker 2: can hold its attention the longest.
Speaker 1: I mean, now I'm curious. So is this something you've
Speaker 1: ever tested on your own pets like Paul. Has Paul
Speaker 1: ever shown any curiosity?
Speaker 2: It's one of those things that we sort of do
Speaker 2: it by default because you get, you know, this collection
Speaker 2: of so many different animal toys. Not surprisingly, Paul definitely
Speaker 2: likes to go back to the super loud, squeaky honky
Speaker 2: chicken thing that dislikes to go to town on it.
Speaker 1: But not the actual chickens.
Speaker 2: No, not the actual well no, if the chickens are
Speaker 2: out Paul is definitely curious there and wants to chase them.
Speaker 2: Fortunately has never gotten a hold of any of them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, how about you, I've.
Speaker 1: Tried to think. I mean, I know, I had this
Speaker 1: pop named Colia for a bit, and he would always
Speaker 1: like sneak under my parents' bed and then just get
Speaker 1: lost for a long time, and we didn't We heard,
Speaker 1: we could hear him gnawing, we could hear him doing stuff,
Speaker 1: and we just assumed he was working on a masterpiece
Speaker 1: that we never got to.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, I'm sure that was the case, Maga.
Speaker 1: Well, before we got ahead of ourselves, we should talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what it means for an animal
Speaker 1: to be curious, because it's not a perfect one to
Speaker 1: one with human curiosity. And in fact, some people aren't
Speaker 1: even convinced that animals can be curious, which is.
Speaker 2: Just wild to me. Like, I'm assuming those are all
Speaker 2: people who've never walked a dog or played with a
Speaker 2: kitten before, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely some unlucky people. So I think it's more
Speaker 1: a matter of perspective, Right, most people have observed the
Speaker 1: kind of behavior you're talking about, a dog wanting to
Speaker 1: sniff every single square inch of a park or a
Speaker 1: kid exploring all the nooks and crannies of a new home.
Speaker 1: But not everyone considers those actions to be true expressions
Speaker 1: of curiosity. Some would argue that animals are just acting
Speaker 1: on instinct rather than a true subjective desire to learn something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you might think that split.
Speaker 2: Only exists than the academic world. But we asked our
Speaker 2: good Palmetra to pull the good people of Brooklyn on
Speaker 2: whether they thought animals could be curious, and while most
Speaker 2: people did, it wasn't quite unanimous. So take a listen.
Speaker 2: Can dogs be curious?
Speaker 1: Yes, in a general way, I think they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're probably too curious, right, They want to sniff everything
Speaker 1: and it gets them into trouble.
Speaker 3: I think my dog is extremely curious, and I think
Speaker 3: it's exciting that her curiosity comes primarily from scent, which
Speaker 3: is different from me. It makes me more curious about
Speaker 3: the world to understand it in a new way.
Speaker 1: Mister bo Is, our four year old Border Collie Labrador retrievers.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that guys smells smells something.
Speaker 1: He's gonna figure it out. What is it? Let me
Speaker 1: rolling it? And yes, very curious.
Speaker 4: I have two cats. Everything's curiosity of you, Well, I
Speaker 4: mean sent sleep, and then two percent eat, and then
Speaker 4: three percent curiosity, which is a lot in a cat
Speaker 4: if they see any movement in the house, they're just like,
Speaker 4: what was that? And then they have to go check
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 2: So I don't think animals are curious at all.
Speaker 1: Everything is from instinct, but it misinterpreted it is curiosity.
Speaker 2: So we heard that one lone voice of descent there
Speaker 2: at the end, but even the first speaker hedged a
Speaker 2: little by saying dogs could be curious in a general way, right,
Speaker 2: which I think brings us back to that big question,
Speaker 2: what does it mean for an animal to be curious? Well,
Speaker 2: to help answer that, I want to turn to the
Speaker 2: work of a British neuroscientist named Richard Byrne. Now, he's
Speaker 2: a renowned scholar on the evolution of cognitive and social behavior,
Speaker 2: including the origins of distinctly human traits, and according to him,
Speaker 2: if we go by the most basic definition of curiosity,
Speaker 2: the motivation to seek out information even in the absence
Speaker 2: of clear goals like food or shelter, that we have
Speaker 2: to admit that some animals do display signs of curiosity.
Speaker 2: We know they aren't solely concerned with basic needs like
Speaker 2: finding food or reproducing, because sometimes they'll also investigate strange objects,
Speaker 2: like seemingly just for the heck of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's the last part that can really get
Speaker 1: us into trouble, right, because how can we say for sure?
Speaker 1: Then animal isn't exploring for a particular reason.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. They absolutely are exploring for a
Speaker 2: specific reason, and it's the same reason that humans do,
Speaker 2: and that's to gain new information. As Professor Burne explained
Speaker 2: in a twenty thirteen paper, once you think of animal
Speaker 2: behavior and information processing terms, the need for something like
Speaker 2: curiosity becomes obvious. Information is power. Information gathering is worth
Speaker 2: doing even if there are no obvious payoffs at the time,
Speaker 2: as long as getting it is not unduly costly or risky.
Speaker 2: Storing information and memory is cheap, and you never know
Speaker 2: when a little knowledge may come in handy, such as
Speaker 2: when a psychologist suddenly deprives you of food and puts
Speaker 2: you back in that where you'd happen to notice some
Speaker 2: cheese earlier.
Speaker 1: I see. So, just like for humans, there's an evolutionary
Speaker 1: advantage for curious animals because they can glean information from
Speaker 1: it that helps them better exploit their surroundings or even
Speaker 1: deal with potential threats I imagine, But I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: risk reward trade off keeps some animals from developing a
Speaker 1: sense of curiosity in the first place, because there are
Speaker 1: probably just some environments where gathering information would be too
Speaker 1: dangerous to justify.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So more adaptable animals like rats, for instance,
Speaker 2: are prone to curiosity because they often live alongside humans
Speaker 2: and have evolved to handle that rapidly changing conditions that
Speaker 2: come with that, and they need to keep exploring and
Speaker 2: investigating them because it benefits them to stay on top
Speaker 2: of these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're always building new things and changing up the landscape,
Speaker 1: redirecting traffic, dropping food and weird places.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. But you know, for an isolated species
Speaker 2: that have their own little niches, it's just the opposite.
Speaker 2: Their environment is more or less static and there isn't
Speaker 2: as much new information that's worth acquiring, so it makes
Speaker 2: sense for them to explore less and just kind of
Speaker 2: stay in their lane. But an animal's ecology isn't the
Speaker 2: only factor in determining its level of curiosity. Cognitive ability
Speaker 2: plays a role as well, by determining how a situation
Speaker 2: is perceived and what kind of information can be derived
Speaker 2: from it. As Professor Burne puts it, with more advanced
Speaker 2: perceptual and brain processes, there's more to discover. With more
Speaker 2: advanced motor abilities, more can be done. Inevitably, these species
Speaker 2: with limited perceptions, small brains, and restricted ability to affect
Speaker 2: their environment are not going to show as many signs
Speaker 2: of curiosity. So what animals are curious about? How long
Speaker 2: their curiosity lasts maybe revealing of their information processing abilities.
Speaker 1: So high functioning animals like chimps, dolphins, octopuses, those are
Speaker 1: animals that are going to be way more curious than
Speaker 1: something like a snail, for instance. But is there also
Speaker 1: a difference in what these animals are curious about? Like
Speaker 1: dolphins world is completely different from that of a housecat,
Speaker 1: so I'd imagine they'd find different things to be intrigued by.
Speaker 2: Right Well, Generally speaking, curious animals are interested in the unknown,
Speaker 2: like places they've never been, objects they've never encountered, and
Speaker 2: individuals that they've never met. But there is some variation
Speaker 2: based on the kind of information they're equipped to process.
Speaker 2: For example, a rat and a maze would be curious
Speaker 2: about different objects in different locations cheese, water, etc.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Scientists call this what wear memory, and it's basically the
Speaker 2: starting point for learning through curiosity. But a little higher
Speaker 2: up on the cognitive ladder are animals that possess what
Speaker 2: whear win memory. So take hummingbirds for instance. They can
Speaker 2: remember all sorts of things about the flowers from which
Speaker 2: they feed, including the color location, even when they were
Speaker 2: last visited, so keeping track of the time helps them
Speaker 2: avoid wasting energy by visiting a flower that hasn't actually
Speaker 2: had time to produce more nectar.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing because I assume they're doing that on
Speaker 1: the strength of their own personal memories, right, hummingbirds don't
Speaker 1: instinctally know to wait three days or whatever before revisiting
Speaker 1: the same flower. They're just making judgment calls based on
Speaker 1: what they've noticed in their own lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can't say that for certain, since hummingbirds
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to communicate with this, but it
Speaker 2: does seem to be the case, and there are lots
Speaker 2: of other examples to support this theory. For instance, some
Speaker 2: species of monkeys will actually use the weather to predict
Speaker 2: whens the right time to revisit a fruit tree. If
Speaker 2: the weather's been warm and sunny in between visits, they're
Speaker 2: more likely to try their luck, you know, But if
Speaker 2: it's been raining all week, they probably know it's not
Speaker 2: worth the effort, and if that weren't impressive enough. There's
Speaker 2: evidence that social animals can also be curious about individuals,
Speaker 2: so this would be the what where, when? Who memory.
Speaker 2: The main example of this is wild elephants, who often
Speaker 2: split up to forage across great distances, and researchers have
Speaker 2: found that highly dispersed elephants will investigate the dung or
Speaker 2: urine they come across in their travels as a way
Speaker 2: to keep track of the locations of out of sight
Speaker 2: family members.
Speaker 1: That is both disgusting and kind of sweet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, sniffing dung to keep your family together. If
Speaker 2: that's not love, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, uh, clearly there's a lot of beneficial information
Speaker 1: that animals can learn through curiosity, and especially if they
Speaker 1: have the brain power to keep track of who, what,
Speaker 1: where and when? But I am curious, like, what about
Speaker 1: an animal species that can also throw something like how
Speaker 1: or why into the mix? Right, Like, do you think
Speaker 1: there's some weird bug out there wondering how the flowers.
Speaker 2: Grow, and I think in that scenario, I hope not.
Speaker 2: I think you know, I don't like the idea of
Speaker 2: a syentient insect, but much less one that understands photosynthesis.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't even understand photosynthesis. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's crazy.
Speaker 2: That's why I called it out. But going back to
Speaker 2: your broader question, it's tough to say like humans are
Speaker 2: curious about why things happen or how stuff works, because
Speaker 2: we're able to recognize when something we perceive doesn't align
Speaker 2: with our expectations of that magician pull the rabbit out
Speaker 2: of his hat? Why is my kid asking to skip dessert?
Speaker 2: Those situations break from what we would expect, and we
Speaker 2: feel a poll to find out why or how that
Speaker 2: might be. But when it comes to other animals, they
Speaker 2: seem to lack the ability or maybe the inclination, to
Speaker 2: question root causes.
Speaker 3: Like we do.
Speaker 1: Well. As tempted as I am to take your word
Speaker 1: for it, there's a recent shakeup in animal science that's
Speaker 1: actually been giving me some pause. It has to do
Speaker 1: with past misjudgments that humans have made about animal capabilities,
Speaker 1: and it's got me thinking that animal curiosity may not
Speaker 1: be as different from ours as we like to think.
Speaker 1: After we take a quick break, i'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: all about it, so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: part time Genius. It is day three of our week
Speaker 1: long journey through the mysterious jungles of curiosity, and if
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed the trip so far, please let us know
Speaker 1: by dropping a line to High Geniuses at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Hi, Geniuses at gmail dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: give us a call on our hotline at three oh two,
Speaker 1: four oh five five nine two five, or you can
Speaker 1: come find us at Instagram or Blue Sky. No matter
Speaker 1: which route you take, we always love hearing from you. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so before the break, we were talking about the different
Speaker 1: levels of curiosity that animals possess based on their abilities
Speaker 1: to process information, and it was starting to look like
Speaker 1: even the peak of that spectrum is still several notches
Speaker 1: below human curiosity.
Speaker 2: Right, But you said there's some big shakeup that's throwing
Speaker 2: this all into question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that is something that flew under most people's radar.
Speaker 1: But in twenty twenty four, dozens of leading scientists signed
Speaker 1: something called quote the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness,
Speaker 1: and the gist of it was to announce that we
Speaker 1: now have strong scientific evidence that birds and other mammals
Speaker 1: experience consciousness or are self aware, and that there's quote
Speaker 1: a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians,
Speaker 1: and fishes, and many invertebrates, including at minimum cephalopod molus, decapod, crustaceans,
Speaker 1: and insects.
Speaker 2: If you're telling me there's some weird bug that wonders
Speaker 2: how flowers grow, I swear I'm walking out of this studio.
Speaker 1: I don't think you will.
Speaker 2: It's like a throw in a thread every once in
Speaker 2: a while.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to worry because the declaration didn't
Speaker 1: get into those kinds of specifics. The point of it
Speaker 1: was to call for more ethical policies governing animal research
Speaker 1: and welfare, and it was in light of those recent findings.
Speaker 1: And I've got to tell you, I looked into some
Speaker 1: of the studies myself, and they really do call a
Speaker 1: lot of things into question, So like what exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years now, humans have been trying to
Speaker 1: draw a hard line between ourselves and other animals. In
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, for example, the French philosophy for Renee
Speaker 1: de Karte argued that animals were nothing but quote material automata,
Speaker 1: so basically biological machines or robots. He didn't think they
Speaker 1: had souls or consciousness, or even that they were capable
Speaker 1: of basic feelings like joy or fear, and that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking prevailed well into the twentieth century. Prominent animal
Speaker 1: psychologists embraced behaviorism and confined their research only to observable behavior.
Speaker 1: Like Descartes, they believed that animals lacked any sense of
Speaker 1: self awareness, and that anyone who thought otherwise was just
Speaker 1: being sentimental and you know, projecting human attributes onto lowlier species.
Speaker 2: But that hasn't been the case for a while, right,
Speaker 2: because I'm thinking of Jane Goodall, who of course passed
Speaker 2: away recently, and she definitely didn't subscribe to the school
Speaker 2: of thought that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: That's true. But by the time she started her research,
Speaker 1: which was obviously groundbreaking, it was the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: scholars had come up with a laundry list of behaviors
Speaker 1: and abilities that were supposedly exclusive to humans, and tool
Speaker 1: making was one of them. Symbolic language, planning for the future,
Speaker 1: emotional responses. These were all held up as concrete proof
Speaker 1: of our uniqueness as humans. But one by one, the
Speaker 1: work of Jane Goodall and her fellow primatologists disproved each
Speaker 1: and every one of those presumptions.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, just read this retrospective on her first big breakthrough
Speaker 2: back in nineteen sixty and she was deep in the
Speaker 2: forest of Tanzania when she witnessed a chimpanzee using blades
Speaker 2: of grass and twigs to pull termites out of a.
Speaker 1: Nest, which is obviously pretty clever for a soulless meat machine.
Speaker 1: But what's even more amazing is that Goodall's discovery finally
Speaker 1: helped free modern science from the restrictive grip of behaviorism.
Speaker 1: As a result, there's been all kinds of research into
Speaker 1: animal cognition over the past sixty years or so, and
Speaker 1: that's why all those leading scientists felt the need to
Speaker 1: make that big pronouncement about animal consciousness last year. So
Speaker 1: many new things have come to light that challenge our
Speaker 1: preconceived notion of intellectual and even moral superiority. For instance,
Speaker 1: we now know that apes, monkeys, and elephants more in
Speaker 1: the loss of those they formed a bond with. And
Speaker 1: even more surprisingly, some smaller brained animals, including donkeys and ferrets,
Speaker 1: have been observed displaying grief. That's a depth of emotion
Speaker 1: that many scientists never would have ascribed to animals in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what about those signs of self awareness that
Speaker 2: the authors mention, Like they said they found evidence in
Speaker 2: birds and even fish, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fish studies are some of my favorites, partially
Speaker 1: because of how unexpected they are. People have a tendency
Speaker 1: to think of fish as this primitive subclass of animals,
Speaker 1: and you always hear things like fish can't feel pain
Speaker 1: like other conscious animals, But it turns out that that
Speaker 1: is completely untrue. A few years back, researchers found that
Speaker 1: when a lab zebra fish receives a painful injection, it'll
Speaker 1: leave its favorite habitat, the one with all the nice
Speaker 1: rocks and vegetation, to visit a boring, empty habitat where
Speaker 1: the water has been infused with a pain reliever.
Speaker 2: Kind of like the fish equivalent of leaving the house
Speaker 2: to go to the doctor's office. Like, I'd to actually say,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty compelling case for self awareness, right, But
Speaker 2: tell me, what else you got?
Speaker 1: Well, the one I really love is this twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: study on the cleaner wrass fish. One of the loftiest
Speaker 1: benchmarks for cognition across species is the ability to recognize
Speaker 1: your own reflection in a mirror, and only a handful
Speaker 1: of animals have been able to pass the so called
Speaker 1: mirror test, and nearly all of them are large brain mammals.
Speaker 1: One of the most notable exceptions is a bird called
Speaker 1: the Eurasian magpie, which first aced the test back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, but the most recent graduate was
Speaker 1: the humble cleaner rass.
Speaker 2: I guess this is my old human bias talking here,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty shocking that a tiny little fish could
Speaker 2: match the wits with great apes and killer whales. Like
Speaker 2: how they pulled that off.
Speaker 1: The fish haven't shared their secret, but here's how the
Speaker 1: study went. Ten fish replacing a tank with a covered mirror,
Speaker 1: and while none of them were interested at first, once
Speaker 1: the cover was removed, seven of the fish immediately started
Speaker 1: attacking its thinking that the image was a rival fish.
Speaker 2: Okay, so not a strong start here.
Speaker 1: No, but here's the thing. After a few days, the
Speaker 1: fish calmed down and began exhibiting these strange behaviors in
Speaker 1: front of the mirror. First they swam upside down, which
Speaker 1: is something that had never been seen in the species before.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable. Then the fish started hanging out in front
Speaker 1: of the mirror for long periods, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: examining their own bodies and checking themselves out. I actually
Speaker 1: find that really amazing that that happened. Like, maybe swimming
Speaker 1: upside down was kind of an experiment, and when they
Speaker 1: saw the mirror fish doing it, they realized they were
Speaker 1: actually looking at themselves, Like, is that the idea? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the theory. So to confirm it, the researchers actually
Speaker 1: mark the fish with a brown pigment beneath the skin,
Speaker 1: and it was purposely made to resemble a parasite that
Speaker 1: often targets the species, And when the fish spotted the
Speaker 1: mark in the mirror, some of them tried to run
Speaker 1: it off. I mean, again, this is genuinely shocking. I
Speaker 1: never would have thought a fish could make all those
Speaker 1: connections and then remember them from one day to the next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like a pretty clear case of learning by
Speaker 1: way of curiosity. And even though the cleaner rass is
Speaker 1: the only fish so far to pass the mirror test.
Speaker 1: There is evidence of curiosity in other aquatic species. For example,
Speaker 1: going back to zebrafish, there was a study in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two where researchers introduced thirty different objects into six
Speaker 1: tanks of zebrafish. Each object was presented for a ten
Speaker 1: minute period and during that time, each group's response was recorded.
Speaker 2: And so what were the researchers looking for exactly?
Speaker 1: So there were two main criteria. One was how long
Speaker 1: it took the fish to approach the objects, and then
Speaker 1: the other was how long they spent investigating each one.
Speaker 1: But the team also kept an eye on the social
Speaker 1: dynamics of the fish, like how the fish interacted with
Speaker 1: each other in the presence of these objects, as well
Speaker 1: as their diving behavior, which is a common stress response
Speaker 1: in zebrafish. And while I don't want to get two
Speaker 1: into the weeds with the data, I will tell you
Speaker 1: that the fish were highly interested in the white shell
Speaker 1: and pink spongeball, but not at all interested in the
Speaker 1: plastic pagoda or the purple cup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't say I blame it, Like purple cup
Speaker 2: sounds like a snooze fest.
Speaker 1: I'm not totally boring.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming the fish's object preference wasn't the only takeaway
Speaker 2: from this though, right, Yeah, the real.
Speaker 1: Payoff was the confirmation that fish are indeed attracted to
Speaker 1: novel objects, and that they find some to be more
Speaker 1: interesting than others, just like terrestrial animals do.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, there were also some startling discoveries about
Speaker 1: the potential benefits of curiosity to an animal's well being.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that zebrafish tended to fight less during
Speaker 1: the object presentations and also exhibited far fewer stress responses.
Speaker 2: That is really interesting. So having something new to explore
Speaker 2: not only boosted the fish's cooperation, it also kind of
Speaker 2: mellowed them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they stopped engaging in fight club, right, But the
Speaker 1: team summed it up this way quote, it is possible
Speaker 1: that zebrafish, like many other species, benefit from activities that
Speaker 1: engage their cognitive abilities and preferences. This research builds on
Speaker 1: our understanding of the determinants and consequence of curiosity across
Speaker 1: species and opens new avenues of investigation regarding the role
Speaker 1: the exploration and learning play in the lives and welfare
Speaker 1: of fishes.
Speaker 2: This is just super interesting to me.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Well, in honor of the zebra fish study, here's today's
Speaker 2: listener activity. Grab an assortment of objects of various sizes, shapes, textures,
Speaker 2: and colors, then present them one at a time. Do
Speaker 2: any animals you have handy, preferably a pet, but a
Speaker 2: wild one. We'll do in a pinch, so as long
Speaker 2: as it's friendly, of course. Now keep track of how
Speaker 2: long the animal investigates the object. Leave us a comment
Speaker 2: in our Instagram or blue Sky detailing your results. Now,
Speaker 2: for an extra contest entry, make a video of your
Speaker 2: experiment and tag us. The deadline is Sunday, October twenty sixth.
Speaker 2: We'll pick one common at random to win an official
Speaker 2: part Time Genius Prize pack. All the details and links
Speaker 2: are in the show notes and on our social media.
Speaker 1: Co man, I really can't wait to see how this goes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how weird would it be if a purple cop turned
Speaker 1: out to be the least appealing object across the board?
Speaker 2: Well, you know this about me. Purple is definitely my
Speaker 2: favorite color, so I'd be pretty pretty upset about that,
Speaker 2: But not that surprising.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I know we've got to take one more
Speaker 1: quick break, But when we come back, we'll look at
Speaker 1: the surprising impact that captivity has had on animals curiosity.
Speaker 1: Please do not go what.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to part time genius. All right, mango, What
Speaker 2: if I told you that life in captivity makes some
Speaker 2: animals more curious than their wild counterparts.
Speaker 1: I would say that the people at Big Zoo had
Speaker 1: gotten to you, because that flies in the face of
Speaker 1: every board of tears line I have ever crossed paths
Speaker 1: with Big Zoo.
Speaker 2: I like that some zoo animals do seem pretty checked
Speaker 2: out in their enclosures. I will definitely give you that.
Speaker 2: But there's mounting evidence, at least in some cases, that
Speaker 2: life in captivity can actually heighten an animal's curious Now,
Speaker 2: the largest support from this comes from a team of
Speaker 2: primatologists at the University of Zurich who spent several years
Speaker 2: studying orangutans.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: This was both in rehabilitation centers and in the wilds
Speaker 2: of the Sumatra and Rainforest.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Part of their job involved setting up delicate climate sensors
Speaker 2: in the rainforest canopy, and the team was amazed to
Speaker 2: find that the orangutans who lived there showed zero interest
Speaker 2: in the strange equipment. This was a far cry from
Speaker 2: the behavior of orangutans in captivity, who would routinely rifle
Speaker 2: through trash cans, ransax stock rooms, even steel laundry that
Speaker 2: had been hung out to dry. Now, the disparity seemed
Speaker 2: to suggest that something about captivity had made the animals
Speaker 2: more curious than they would have been in the wild.
Speaker 2: So to test that theory, one of the team members
Speaker 2: built a fake orangutan nest in the sumatrain canopy. She
Speaker 2: then filled them with these man made objects, including a
Speaker 2: Swiss flag and plastic fruit, and she set up motion
Speaker 2: activated cameras to capture the wild apes reactions.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing they weren't that interested.
Speaker 2: They could and care less macow over the course of
Speaker 2: several months dozens of while the orangutans walk straight past
Speaker 2: the items without giving them a second look. But here's
Speaker 2: the crazy part. When another team member repeated the experiment
Speaker 2: in multiple zoos, she got the exact opposite result. The
Speaker 2: captive orangutans completely trash the nest in a matter of minutes. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously that's not what we would call constructive curiosity, but
Speaker 2: research also shows that curious orangutans are better at problem
Speaker 2: solving than they're less curious peers. So, just like with
Speaker 2: the zebrafish, there was a tangible benefit to seeking out
Speaker 2: new things and reveling and exploration.
Speaker 1: Do we have any idea why that was the case,
Speaker 1: Like why would living in captivity make them more curious?
Speaker 1: And also why would it improve their mental abilities? Like
Speaker 1: it feels pretty counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: Well, the research is gone going on this, but the
Speaker 2: prevailing theory right now is that the animals close contact
Speaker 2: with humans unlocked their latent capacity for curiosity, and in
Speaker 2: cases when and that exposure happened at an early age,
Speaker 2: it also boosted their problem solving skills later on as adults.
Speaker 1: I assume the controlled environment played a factor in that too, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are no natural predators to worry about Nazoo, There
Speaker 1: is no need to track down your next meal. That
Speaker 1: kind of security takes off the pressure an animal might
Speaker 1: feel in the wild, and just like humans, right like,
Speaker 1: it might free them up to explore their space owned
Speaker 1: skills they otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to acquire,
Speaker 1: right Like, it frees up a lot of mental ability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know the really cool
Speaker 2: thing is this phenomenon isn't limited to orangutans. So other
Speaker 2: researchers have found similar improvements in the problem solving skills
Speaker 2: of other animals. They've done this with hyenas, with birds,
Speaker 2: with monkeys, and so while life in captivity isn't without
Speaker 2: its drawbacks, it can sometimes provide this, you know, pretty rich,
Speaker 2: more fulfilling life for animals prone to curiosity.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of like a super curious hyena.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it's sort of scared about that idea.
Speaker 1: I also love the idea that one animal can help
Speaker 1: unleash the curiosity of another. You know, that we can
Speaker 1: make animals more curious just by being close to them.
Speaker 1: It's kind of how I imagined our own evolution went right, Like,
Speaker 1: our prehistoric ancestors lived apart in small family units, and
Speaker 1: that system worked well enough for us to develop basic
Speaker 1: tools upright posture. But we didn't really invent the good
Speaker 1: stuff like art and language until hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: years later, when humans started living closer together. And this
Speaker 1: happened through community, right, really large communities, and that close
Speaker 1: proximity and the security, really, the security it afforded may
Speaker 1: have been the secret sauce that propelled us up that
Speaker 1: next wrong of the evolutionary ladder. So who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: we can have the same effect on a different species,
Speaker 1: like orangutans, for for instance.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if there's one thing this conversation has
Speaker 2: taught me, it's to stop underestimating animals and humans have
Speaker 2: spent way too long focusing on our perceived differences and
Speaker 2: feeling threatened by these inescapable similarity. It's time we start
Speaker 2: celebrating things we have in common, like curiosity and apparently
Speaker 2: this mutual disdain for purple cups.
Speaker 1: The more we talk about it, the more convinced I
Speaker 1: am that Charles Darwin had it right all along, because
Speaker 1: he wrote way back in the eighteen hundreds that the
Speaker 1: difference in intellect and emotion between man and animals is
Speaker 1: only a matter of degree, not of kind. So you know,
Speaker 1: while there may not be a non human animal that
Speaker 1: wonders how and why today, if you give the right
Speaker 1: time and the right conditions, you know, maybe you wouldn't
Speaker 1: rule it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good old dar When ahead of the curve as usual,
Speaker 2: I think it's a good place to leave things for today,
Speaker 2: but be sure to tune in tomorrow, or we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about how curiosity changes over the course of a
Speaker 2: lifetime and how we can keep it from atrophying in
Speaker 2: old age.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and
Speaker 1: blue sky at part Time Genius so you can keep
Speaker 1: up with our listener activities and our giveaways. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mitra Banshahi, who I absolutely love for collecting field
Speaker 1: tape for us, and from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
Speaker 1: by Will Pearson and Me Mongaetikler and researched by our
Speaker 1: good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
Speaker 1: produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Speaker 1: trustee Dara Potts and uy Me Shoy. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. O