71 Interesting Pics And Facts For Those Who Want To Keep On Learning (New Pics)

It’s fascinating just how fascinated we are by the world. Not necessarily by something beautiful or strange. Anything that piques our curiosity, really, whether it’s a weirdly shaped rock or a patch of grass we’ve seen a thousand times.

When you think about it, this is a little counterintuitive. To get where we are today, our species has been laser-focused on survival and reproduction. Getting caught up exploring random things is, in the grand scheme of things, kind of a waste of time. So why do we do it?

Curiosity explains a lot about us, even if scientists don’t fully agree on why we have it. One compelling explanation, according to the BBC, involves a concept called neoteny.

In evolutionary theory, it refers to the idea that humans retain childlike traits well into adulthood and throughout their lives, more so than other mammals.

Physically, things like being relatively hairless point to this. Behaviorally, our lifelong sense of curiosity and playfulness does too.

In some ways, this has made us physically weaker than our primate cousins. But it also meant we inherited a child’s openness to the world—a deep capacity to learn and a strong sense of connection to each other.

Our extended childhood allows us to absorb far more from our surroundings, including shared culture. Even as adults, we keep picking up new ways of thinking and doing things, which helps us adapt in ways other species simply can’t.

Even though curiosity might seem like it could’ve worked against our survival—wandering too deep into unknown territory has never been a great idea—in the right doses, it likely did the opposite.

Psychologist Coltan Scrivner, who studies morbid curiosity, illustrates this well with prey and predator relationships. A zebra needs to know where lions roam and how they behave. That requires a certain willingness to observe and pay attention.

Wander too close out of curiosity and it becomes lunch. Stay completely oblivious and it never sees the attack coming. The right balance is what keeps it alive.

The same logic applies to humans, with one key difference. We have language and culture, which means we don’t have to experience every threat firsthand to learn from it. We can share information, tell stories, warn each other.

It’s a big part of why so many of us are drawn to horror or true crime. It feels like entertainment, but underneath it we’re absorbing a lot of information about danger and how to avoid it.

It turns out the brain also treats satisfying curiosity a lot like satisfying hunger. A study at the University of Reading found that when participants wanted to know how a magic trick worked, it triggered activity in the same brain region associated with food cravings.

Those who were most curious were even willing to risk a mild electric shock just to get an explanation.