Curiosity

For the Mars rover, see Curiosity rover.

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Emotions
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Curious children gather around a photographer, looking at her camera

Curiosity is an emotion that shows a want or need to know new things. It is shown in behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning. It is an innate behaviour of humans and many animal species. Curiosity is a major cause and force behind scientific research and other studies.

Curiosity is common to humans at all ages starting from infancy, through adulthood. It is easy to see in many other animal species, such as apes, cats, rodents, fish, reptiles, and insects. Although it is an innate behaviour of many living beings, it is not thought of as an instinct because it is not a fixed action pattern.

A morbid curiosity is an addictive curiosity with death, violence, or something else that may hurt you physically or emotionally.

Curiosity Media

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  Children peer over shoulders to see what their friends are reading.

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  Dopamine pathway in the brain

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  Left: normal brain. Right: Alzheimer's disease afflicted brain. Severe degeneration of areas implicated in curiosity

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  A crowd mills around the site of a car accident in Czechoslovakia in 1980.