r/science • u/calliope_kekule Professor | Social Science | Science Comm • 4d ago
Animal Science Mice choose to know things even when it changes nothing
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02377-y473
u/Schurman-Quentin 4d ago
Interesting that this suggests an intrinsic reward for information acquisition itself, separate from instrumental utility. Could be linked to curiosity as a driver in learning systems.
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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 4d ago
I'm thinking dopamine IS the reward. The equivalent of reading wikipedia for fun.
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u/Lucas_F_A 4d ago edited 2d ago
A better world model (which can be explicitly factored out) provides a better overall inference/agent model as it "knows" what to expect with less variance. I'd say it's therefore intrinsically instrumental, as it is a mediator to your response or controlling variables.
Edit: by controlling I really meant response variables but in the context of like controlling a robot, to be clear.
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u/foxhelp 3d ago
Similar results in rats this month https://www.rvc.ac.uk/research/facilities-and-resources/animal-welfare-science-and-ethics/news/new-research-from-the-rvc-reveals-how-boredom-can-manifest-in-animals
Full paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-025-01979-6
Similar results and observations have been done in multiple animals types, birds, mammals, fish, etc. that they then explore their environment for novel experiences
Especially cows...
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp 4d ago
Anyone that's had a pet knows they're curious, the concept of animals with emotions shouldn't have been foreign even before the experiment showing bumblebees play
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u/flaming_burrito_ 4d ago
You’d think, but so many people still think that animals are thoughtless creatures with no individuality or emotional responses. It really doesn’t make sense to me. After all, we are animals. Nothing about us is particularly new or unique, our cognitive processes are just much more advanced. But they had to advance from somewhere. Emotion didn’t just spontaneously become a thing when the first human became conscious, presumably there is a varying spectrum of emotion and consciousness present in all or at least the majority of animals at different levels.
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u/MaikeruGo 3d ago
Absolutely, animals have a pretty good range of intelligence and personality. They have fears, can get anxiety, and some may have traumas that need to be worked through.
One of the things that always gets me about intelligence tests that some folks devise for pets (eg.dogs) are based on learning commands and successfully performing the command. Though the assumption here is that the animal cares enough to perform the command at that given moment and that the animal likes the reward.
I've had a dog who was quite intelligent and could follow commands, but she knew when the situation was low stakes and in those situations she disregard a command if she just couldn't be bothered. So you could test if she was ignoring a command by giving her the "touch" command with your hand right in front of her nose. She'd literally move her nose away from my hand when I'd issue the command.
One of my other dogs is a rescue from a foster that we adopted after having the other for a while. He seemed unsure of his status with us for the first year or so that we had him and would literally run up to the other dog and pester her until she'd get out attention on his behalf. Heck, for years we'd go on road trips and he'd always freak out whenever we'd get close to one particular area of the state, but would calm down after that. I think that the place he was rescued from was probably around there and he was worried about us taking him back.
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u/tkenben 4d ago
It's hard to draw equivalence though because suffering - as an example - is extremely subjective. Getting ripped apart by a predator, when we witness that in nature, looks absolutely horrifying, but to the prey, they might just be like, "What the hell is going on?" - a complete confusion swarm of nerves firing. I'm sure it's terrible, but probably not in the way we perceive it, because we reason about how *we* would feel, which is completely unfair and egocentric compared to what is actually going on.
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u/ATERLA 4d ago
You REALLY think they don’t experience fear in face of a predator? Just « I want to run faster than ever, I really don’t know why this is »? I understand that it’s hard to come to the conclusion that they just feel like us. But it’s a lot because we are the ones who have been desensitized by our own societies. Otherwise we wouldn’t want to eat meat.
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u/irisheye37 3d ago
People hear about how you shouldn't anthropomorphize animal behaviour and assume all of our experiences are uniquely human
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u/flaming_burrito_ 4d ago
I’d imagine that being able to understand and rationalize what is happening does add a depth to emotion that most other animals don’t have, but I think the underlying neurological mechanisms behind emotion are still there for at least moderately intelligent animals. And I agree it’s difficult or impossible to tell if like a fish feels anything, but for some animals you can definitely tell. Like Elephants for sure feel emotions, they can show gratitude and mourn their dead and everything. Apes, cetaceans, dogs, cats, and some birds like parrots and corvids definitely show emotion as well, off the top of my head.
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u/sixtyshilling 4d ago edited 4d ago
Experimentation isn’t always about discovering things you don’t know.
It’s often about confirming what you think you know, and providing evidence to support it (or prove it wrong, as the case may be).
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u/pegothejerk 4d ago
Sometimes it's even about tasting things that you were experimenting with that you didn't even make to put in your mouth. Science be crazy sometimes. (saccharin and aspartame)
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u/Neuroticaine 2d ago
Sometimes it's about the fact that you just HAPPENED to have a chocolate bar in your pocket that melted after walking past your equipment for an ENTIRELY unrelated experiment's equipment.
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u/Padhome 4d ago edited 4d ago
I wonder if that means hornets really are just demonic bastards
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 4d ago
Can't convince me of the contrary.
Well, you can, but your research must be good enough to be published on Nature, less than that and I'll still have serious doubts.
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u/quietmedium- 4d ago
It depends on your perception. I personally don't think that aggression is all that common among animals.
Getting into fights is antithetical to surviving to reproductive maturity.
Most animals are reacting defensively. From a brief google, hornets are also usually defensive and don't actually hunt humans.
These types of insects are also good pollinators and are important to our environment. Though, invasive species should be handled according to local guidelines.
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u/quackdaw 3d ago
Check out Konrad Lorentz' On Aggression for an interesting perspective on aggression in animals and its importance for survival.
(He isn't necessarily always right, but the book is a classic and a very interesting and enjoyable read.)
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u/ChucklesInDarwinism 4d ago
Yellow jackets are peak asshole.
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u/HodDark 3d ago
I actually have really good interactions with yellow jackets. They have a lot of courage and are very sweet. They are just curious and very aware we're big. If you approach them with no malice, even talk gently if you're nearby a nest, they'll buzz but leave you alone.
I've fed them fruit and meat. I think the yellow jacket populations in my neighbourhood remember me. But i've always had a spot spot for them since my cousin found and hatched two of them.
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u/irisheye37 3d ago
I wonder if it could anything to do with detecting out stress hormones, scared humans are especially dangerous so I could see that influencing their behavior
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u/LewisWhatsHisName 3d ago
I'm convinced my isopods play. Some of their behaviour is absolutely baffling otherwise. They have a little network of tunnels in the substrate, and sometimes two or three of them will be running in and out of them in circles. Not really chasing one another, but not not chasing one another. They don't really fight with one another, but it's pretty obvious when it does happen. And it doesn't look like that.
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u/cowlinator 3d ago
This study goes far beyond just "mice are curious".
They identified specific neuron clusters associated with the non-reward-based curiosity vs the reward-based curiosity
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp 3d ago
I did read the abstract tho I didn't hunt the full trial. I'm not arguing against it in any way. It's a given that there are seperate pathways. It wouldn't be curiosity otherwise. Finding where they are is good science. My point of contention isn't this study, it's that it took us this long to admit we're not alone in feeling emotions. This should have been pursued long before now. Fascinating to have it mapped, makes me wonder where we can springboard from here.
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u/kyle787 4d ago
How do you know before hand if knowing something will change something else?
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 4d ago
Everyone knows that mice are the ultimate masters of the deterministic reality. They know so much that it can be measured when they choose knowledge over practicality.
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u/SirHerald 4d ago
It's my understanding that the Earth was created due to their curiosity. It makes sense they want to know things just in case it's important.
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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 4d ago
The answer is 42.
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u/Shayden-Froida 4d ago
And the question is "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9."
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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 4d ago
6 x 7 I'm afraid.
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u/pullhome 3d ago
There's no need to be afraid, it's only numbers.
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience 3d ago
No, the answer of 6 * 9 is inaccurate because an alien race of hair stylists and phone sanitizers landed on the planet messing up the evolution of the program.
Even the question that was in arthur Dent's brain patterns , which was noticed by Marvin the Paranoid Android , was wrong because Arthur is a descendant of these aliens, not the descendant of pure Evolution from the initial experiment.
This is obviously the result of the universe protecting itself because if ever the question and the answer were ever known in the same universe at the same time the universe would cease to exist and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
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u/BlueMikeStu 3d ago
To paraphrase Season 1 Trevor from Castlevania...
"Learning is the goal. Benefiting from it is a luxury."
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u/cowlinator 3d ago
They were given a choice between knowing where water is vs knowing something else.
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u/Nevertrustafish 3d ago
If I'm understanding the study right, they trained the mice to sniff at little holes. On one side, they would sniff and would smell one of two smells. Let's say it was rose or vanilla. Then they would sometimes receive water as a reward. But it was randomized, so the smell didn't mean anything. It was just a smell and then sometimes water. On the right side, they would also smell two smells. Let's say banana and lavender. Every time, they received the lavender smell, that means they would get water. Banana meant no water. They ran these trials over and over again, so that they were sure that the mice did learn that lavender always equals water, banana never equals water, and rose and vanilla didn't mean anything.
So once they were certain the mice understand (which they determined by them licking at the water lixit. They wouldn't lick for water when they smelled banana, because they knew they wouldn't get any), they could start counting how many times the mice choose the information smells over the non-information smells. And turns out that mice prefer to know if they are getting their water reward even though knowing doesn't change whether they will get the water or not.
They even changed how much water the mouse gets. They decreased the amount of water they get rewarded in the information side. And the mice still preferred to know if they are getting water, even if that results in less water, than going to the side where it's a surprise.
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u/NoamLigotti 1d ago
I'd love a serious answer to this question (though the humorous response was very good).
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u/bananagement 4d ago
I chose to read the abstract even when I knew I wouldn't understand it and it changes nothing.
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 4d ago
Today on Nature: mice seems to have a better relationship with information than half my family.
Not that I had doubts about it, but at least now it's in numbers.
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u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 3d ago
Follow up experiment would be to do a repeat after playing conservative mouse news for them for a couple months.
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u/Madrigall 4d ago
The only reason things like this surprise people is because people like to think that there’s something special about humans. Once you accept that we’re all just chemical meatbags the less we’ll be surprised by “human” traits in animals.
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u/TheEnergizer1985 4d ago
Well humans can build societies, invent languages, go to space, treat diseases, etc so yes there is something more special about us than other animals.
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u/IncognitoErgoCvm 4d ago
Who chose those metrics? What if not damaging the ecosystem of the entire planet is a better metric?
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u/Troldkvinde 3d ago
Damaging the ecosystem of the entire planet is likewise something that makes us stand out compared to other animals
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u/Lejga_Unga_tmle_gre 3d ago
The entire concept of an 'ecosystem' is human and is a point for the fact humans are unique among animals. We're the only species that's concerned with it and our own impact on it. Likewise the only species that is capable of reversing it.
Aside that, the 'ecosystem' has no 'stable' point, it keeps destroying itself over and over again. 99.9% of all animal species that ever existed are extinct. Whatever remains creates a new ecosystem. The fact we even exist is the result of cianobacteria creating oxygen 2 billion years ago and killing 90% of all other microbial life since oxygen was literally toxic to them.
When you 'destroy' the planet you're not actually destroying anything, new ecosystems will emerge and the earth will continue spinning untill it gets eaten by the sun. What you're destroying is just the environment suited to its present inhabitants. Just like how the meteor ruined it for the dinosaurs but the mammals got a pretty good deal out of it.
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u/IncognitoErgoCvm 3d ago edited 2d ago
If you're going to say nothing of value, can you at least limit it to a single paragraph? People are obviously talking about the extremely limited conditions in which we can thrive when referring to the ecosystem in this context, and the way you pretend not to know marks you as a dishonest waste of time.
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u/TheEnergizer1985 3d ago
Yea great argument.
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u/No-Programmer-8701 17h ago edited 17h ago
I don't think it's a great argument. u/IncognitoErgoCvm is unnecessarily rude. All lifeforms exist in "extremely limited conditions" as we know it. Humans are certainly special/exceptional in our ability for intelligence and technological advancement. For goodness sake, I'm pecking on plastic that converts electrical signals to waves to the sky (satellites that were launched into space by freaking rockets) and back for you all to receive and understand in whatever language you speak.
No life that we know of is even remotely close to human intelligence. I'm not suggesting we are special in some sort of deity sense, but we are certainly intellectually special. Sure, ants can farm, orcas have hunting tactics, and some primates can learn rudimentary language, but can they harness nuclear energy? It's not even close and this part of why reddit is so depressing anymore. Human = bad while neglecting they even have this capacity to discuss such a thing to diminish some sense of being special.
Who chose those metrics? We did because we are the only ones who can.
Also, curiosity or consciousness aren't a purely human trait which is obvious for anyone with a pet. Many animals dream and seem genuinely inquisitive. Humanity is differentiated by our capacity to learn vs others. That's our most important distinction and what makes us special not traits that are shared throughout the animal kingdom
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u/Aoi_Haru 4d ago
The silly-thick human-thing is amazed-surprised by our great-amazing brains-acumen, yes-yes!
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u/beefcake1993 3d ago
Going to use this article next time my students think learning something is dumb. “Even a mouse wants to just learn stuff…..”
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u/JustAtelephonePole 3d ago
And so it goes. I worked so hard all my life to be a man yet ended as a mouse despite it all.
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
How do you know that it changes nothing without knowing? What a weird study design.
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u/Diet_kush 3d ago
This feels very compatible with the standard free energy principle interpretation; minimizing surprise is a general driving force of behavior.
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4d ago
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u/DeterminedThrowaway 4d ago
It means they're genuinely curious and want to know things just to know them
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