Curiosity is very much an animal instinct ; human consciousness and animals' consciousness are very much different in how they differentiate through acting upon their instincts. As animals do, humans are a slave to their instincts (their unconscious) and as Nietzsche put it : before sacrificing God as what is most sacred to us, we had to sacrifice our instincts, meaning we had to repress our instincts to become "sophisticated". You cannot threaten an animal with the burden of death in the future ; you cannot give it an existential crisis by showing him the bones of his mate. They surely do mourn others but do not seem to understand that this also will happen to them. I do agree that some examples are very interesting ; for example, the elephants cemeteries where they go when they are old to die and the relationship they have with the concept of death. It would still seem to me as an instinct insofar as it looks very much like a biological clock. The idea of differenciation in consciousness in our species is also a very interesting one to explore ; people from very old tribes seem to have a different kind of consciousness than we do. Two types have been observed : a consciousness of events and a Collective consciousness . The first one seems to be the oldest one in terms of evolution ; it is simply not an individual consciousness nor a collective one ; the individual acts as if it isn't a person but merely one with the events around him. The second one came after : it is simply like the individual consciousness but shared by a group ; what is felt by one is also felt by the others. So the oldest one would very much look like an animal's type of consciousness. Now the question that arises is what's next ? Why does it goes from the events towards the individual and why has this particular order been selected ? What's the step after the individual, the hyper-individual ? This, too me, seem like the most interesting discussion to have with the discussion on the development of consciousness in humans and why does it seem different than the rest. Let me know what you think.