Why are we so Curious?

“A child is an island of curiosity surrounded by a sea of question marks”

— Anonymous

You don’t need Wonder to tell you that kids truly do say the darndest things.

In their defense, however, do you actually know why the sky is blue? Why there are so many languages in the world? Or why do adults sometimes cry when they’re happy?

Curiosity is both the reason kids love playing with Legos, and why some of the more chronically curious kids wonder what would happen if they stuck one up their nose. As chaotic (yet, unintentionally profound?) these questions may appear at first, that unfettered “itch” for curiosity is what psychologist William James calls “the impulse towards better cognition.”

For an apex predator, it’s a bit strange how ineffective newborns are at survival. For at least the first 1,000 hours after its birth, babies stick to what they know best– curled up in fetal position, with only a few innate set of skills (or reflexes, really)– A fairly short list mostly comprised of breathing, swallowing, suckling, and crying.

Curiosity is so visible in infants because they need to learn a vast amount of information in a short time. From the very moment we’re born, the biggest trade-off we possess as a result of our evolutionary lottery is a boundless capacity to learn and innovate.

This week, Wonder digs deep to uncover the cause (and cure) for our preternatural curiosity.

*Curiosity is the* ***#1 strongest correlator*** *between social-emotional skills and cognitive skills. (source*)

The Curious Case of the Cognition of Youngins

Growing Gains. According to astrophysicist Mario Livio, kids appear more curious not because we lose the curiosity bug as we get older, but our curiosity changes from the perceptual (which is being interested in many things and the willingness to even take risks for novelty) towards the epistemic curiosity– an infovore mentality or, the love of knowledge. And boy, do we love knowledge :)

Dopamine is intricately linked to our desire to be more curious. meaning our brain rewards the self for learning, exploring, and satisfying one’s curiosity.

Here are THREE other Key Roles Curiosity plays in our daily lives:

Means of Survival– The urge to explore and seek novelty helps us remain vigilant and gain knowledge about our constantly changing environment. Research even shows people become more curious when faced with a crisis.
Increased Happiness– Research has shown curiosity to be associated with higher levels of positive emotions, lower anxiety, more satisfaction with life, and greater overall well-being. People are also generally “better at learning things” they are curious about.
Boosting Achievement– Studies reveal that curiosity leads to more enjoyment and participation in school and higher academic achievement, as well as greater learning, engagement, and performance at work. In addition, curiosity also improves people’s memory.

So when it comes to kids’ exhaustive curiosity, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

That principle is the one thing nearly every mom and dad has in common (speaking from their own experience, of course). 94% of parents believe the more curious children are, the more likely they are to be successful as adults.

From ***left*** to ***right***, you can see how **large brains appear several times in the mammalian radiation** (a ***rapid increase*** **in the number of species with a common ancestor** stemming from as far back as 250 Million years ago). Each of these brains requires the same proportionate amount of food energy to function. (s *ource*)

The Brains Behind the Operation.

Hey, Big Head! While all animals are curious in some capacity– even the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has exhibited the trait– humans are in a league of their own (worms also can’t play baseball, so that too).

That’s because relative to almost every other animal species, human brains are HUGE… 7 times bigger than it is in other similarly-sized animals and even 3 times larger compared to our closest cousins, the chimpanzee and bonobo.

But it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion in the ocean, as they say– Our brains are so freaking huge, they’re not very efficient– it takes a proportionately larger amount of energy fuel to make our wrinkly mind machines run. With gas prices so astronomical at the moment, imagine the cost differential of fueling a Mini Cooper versus that of a Jeep Grand Cherokee?

The added 60 billion brain neurons from an orangutan-sized hominin ancestor to modern Homo (that’s us!) requires an additional 360 calories per day, which was probably not readily available to great apes on their diet…. And that is why humanity’s greatest invention is not, in fact, sliced bread, but the BBQ.

Our ancestors’ ability to harness fire to cook foods is what gave humans the ability to offset the high metabolic cost of so many neurons to drastically increase our energy yield of foods and the speed with which we can consume them in a given day– thus fueling the most powerful tool for inquiry and curiosity in the known universe.