Curious Kitten (who is no longer a kitten, but we'll leave that to one side) has developed a fascination for what might be on top of the dresser. This, along with the top of the TV, is the only place outside of a closet or cabinet that the cats can't get to.
This lead me to think about curiosity generally. Cats are perhaps notoriously inquisitive; the fact that curiosity killed the cat is a cliche', testifies to that. People are also curious. Dogs are curious. Dolphins are, too. These are also intelligent species.
Does curiosity lead to, or require intelligence? Indulging in curiosity involves risk; it can lead on into dangerous situations where intelligence needed to survive - would evolution therefor tend to favor those who are both curious and intelligent, rather than just curious.
Not sure how to test that, though.
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I think it boils down to who the dominant predator is in your local ecosystem. If you're a wildcat in the ancestral past, there might be some risk in venturing into an unknown place in search of prey, but that's balanced by the certainty of being hungry if you don't. There might be a poisonous snake or bigger, meaner predator waiting for you, but most of the time your probing will be rewarded.
I guess there's a 'chicken and egg' aspect to it, then. Was curiosity rewarded and thus reinforced in those higher up the food chain? Or punished and quashed out in thise lower down the chain?
Well, maybe not 'chicken and egg', but something.
The mental hardware for curiosity is super-expensive metabolically, also requires a large and heavy cranium to carry it around in. I think it's only possible to have a big forebrain if you have a steady supply of energy-rich animal protein already, limiting curiosity to the predators. Jared Diamond, Susan Blackmore, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins helped me figure this all out.
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