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A curious kitten.

Curiosity is any natural inquisitive behaviour, evident by observation in many animal species, and is the emotional aspect of living beings that engenders exploration, investigation, and learning.

See also: Behavioral genetics

Curiosity is an innate capability of many living beings, but it can not be subsumed under category of instinct because it lacks the quality of fixed action pattern; it is rather one of innate basic emotions because it can be expressed in many flexible ways while instinct is always expressed in a fixed way, and like any innate capability it confers a survival advantage to certain species, and can be found in their genomes.

Curiosity is common to human beings at all ages from infancy to old age, and is easy to observe in many other animal species. These include apes, cats, fish, reptiles, and insects; as well as many others. Many aspects of exploration are shared among all beings, as all known terrestrial beings share similar aspects: limited size and a need to seek out food sources.

Strong curiosity is the main motivation of famous scientists. In fact, it is mainly curiosity that makes a human being an expert in a certain field of knowledge.

Many famous historical figures were affected strongly by curiosity, to explore and conquer, for example, Columbus, Balboa, Magellan, Coronado, Sir Francis Drake, etc., to name a few.

Though humans are sometimes considered particularly very curious, they sometimes seem to miss the obvious when compared to other animals. What seems to happen is that human curiosity combined with the ability to think in an abstract way, lead to mimesis, fantasy and imagination - eventually leading to an especially human way of thinking ("human reason"), which is abstract and self aware, or conscious.

A morbid curiosity is a compulsion, fixed with excitement and fear, to know about macabre topics, such as death and horrible violence (see also: snuff film). In a milder form, however, this can be understood as a cathartic form of behavior or as something instinctive within humans. According to Aristotle, in his Poetics we even "enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose sight is painful to us." (This aspect of our nature is often referred to as the 'Car Crash Syndrome' or 'Trainwreck Syndrome', derived from the notorious inability of passersby to ignore such accidents.)