I don’t think there’s any rat out there that thinks “huh, I wonder what would happen if I connected this wire to that glowing thing…” and I don’t think the basic principles about movement coordination changed that much on that evolutionary time-scale.
I could imagine a chimpanzee wondering about what will happen but then chimpanzee’s also have strong social mind.
There may be more than one form of curiosity; this discussion suggests that humans, monkeys and rats differ in the kinds of curiosity that they exhibit (emphasis added):
The history of studies of animal curiosity is nearly as long as the history of the study of human curiosity. Ivan Pavlov, for example, wrote about the spontaneous orienting behavior in dogs to novel stimuli (which he called the “What-is-it?” reflex) as a form of curiosity (Pavlov, 1927). In the mid 20th century, exploratory behavior in animals began to fascinate psychologists, in part because of the challenge of integrating it into strict behaviorist approaches (e.g. Tolman, 1948). Some behaviorists counted curiosity as a basic drive, effectively giving up on providing a direct cause (e.g. Pavlov, 1927). This stratagem proved useful even as behaviorism declined in popularity. For example, this view was held by Harry Harlow—the psychologist best known for demonstrating that infant rhesus monkeys prefer the company of a soft, surrogate mother over a bare wire mother. Harlow referred to curiosity as a basic drive in and of itself—a “manipulatory motive”—that drives organisms to engage in puzzle-solving behavior that involved no tangible reward (e.g., Harlow, Blazek, & McClearn, 1956; Harlow, Harlow, & Meyer, 1950; Harlow & McClearn, 1954).
Psychologist Daniel Berlyne is among the most important figures in the 20th century study of curiosity. He distinguished between the types of curiosity most commonly exhibited by human and non-humans along two dimensions: perceptual versus epistemic, and specific versus diversive (Berlyne, 1954). Perceptual curiosity refers to the driving force that motivates organisms to seek out novel stimuli, which diminishes with continued exposure. It is the primary driver of exploratory behavior in non-human animals and potentially also human infants, as well as a possible driving force of human adults’ exploration. Opposite perceptual curiosity was epistemic curiosity, which Berlyne described as a drive aimed “not only at obtaining access to information-bearing stimulation, capable of dispelling uncertainties of the moment, but also at acquiring knowledge”. He described epistemic curiosity as applying predominantly to humans, thus distinguishing the curiosity of humans from that of other species (Berlyne, 1966).
The second dimension of curiosity that Berlyne described informational specificity. Specific curiosity referred to desire for a particular piece of information, while diversive curiosity referred to a general desire for perceptual or cognitive stimulation (e.g., in the case of boredom). For example, monkeys robustly exhibit specific curiosity when solving mechanical puzzles, even without food or any other extrinsic incentive (e.g., Davis, Settlage, & Harlow, 1950; Harlow, Harlow, & Meyer, 1950; Harlow, 1950). However, rats exhibit diversive curiosity when, devoid of any explicit task, they robustly prefer to explore unfamiliar sections of a maze(e.g., Dember, 1956; Hughes, 1968; Kivy, Earl, & Walker, 1956). Both specific and diversive curiosity were described as species-general information-seeking behaviors.
Later in the paper, when trying to establish a more up-to-date framework for thinking about curiosity, they suggest that its evolutionary pathway can be traced to behaviors which are already present in roundworms:
Even very simple organisms trade off information for rewards. While their information-seeking behavior is not typically categorized as curiosity, the simplicity of their neural systems makes them ideally suited for studies that may provide its foundation. For example, C. elegans is a roundworm whose nervous system contains 302 neurons and that actively forages for food, mostly bacteria. When placed on a new patch (such as a petri dish in a lab), it first explores locally (for about 15 minutes), then abruptly adjusts strategies and makes large, directed movements in a new direction (Calhoun, Chalasani, & Sharpee, 2014). This search strategy is more sophisticated and beneficial than simply moving towards food scents (or guesses about where food may be); instead, it provides better long-term payoff because it provides information as well. It maximizes a conjoint variable that includes both expected reward and information about the reward. This behavior, while computationally difficult, is not too difficult for worms. A small network of three neurons can plausibly implement it. Other organisms that have simple information-seeking behavior include crabs (Zeil, 1998), bees (Gould 1986; Dyer, 1991) ants (Wehner et al., 2002), and moths (Vergasolla et al., 2007).
I don’t think there’s any rat out there that thinks “huh, I wonder what would happen if I connected this wire to that glowing thing…” and I don’t think the basic principles about movement coordination changed that much on that evolutionary time-scale.
I could imagine a chimpanzee wondering about what will happen but then chimpanzee’s also have strong social mind.
There may be more than one form of curiosity; this discussion suggests that humans, monkeys and rats differ in the kinds of curiosity that they exhibit (emphasis added):
Later in the paper, when trying to establish a more up-to-date framework for thinking about curiosity, they suggest that its evolutionary pathway can be traced to behaviors which are already present in roundworms: