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People love to watch violent things. From slasher films to boxing, there's some intrinsic appeal to watching people get pummeled. The dystopian thriller "Squid Game," for instance, debuted in 2021 and in three years racked up 330 million streams totaling more than 2.8 billion hours viewed. Even monkeys pay more attention to videos of other monkeys fighting.

Now, researchers at Princeton University have found that there may be something useful gained from all this watching: being better prepared if you find yourself in a similar situation.

In a new paper, Princeton neuroscientists reveal that male mice that merely watched other males fight were better prepared fighters themselves without being any meaner or more aggressive than other mice. Their brains changed in many of the same ways, too, as those of mice with actual fighting experience.

"They're kind of midway between the truly experienced fighters and the naive animals," said Annegret Falkner, assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton and senior author of the paper. "There's something about experience that gets you all the way there, but observation gets you in a similar direction, but only about halfway."

Male mice were assigned to one of three different groups: fighters, spectators or novices.

For eight consecutive days, each group participated in three daily 10-minute training sessions. Fighters had a sparring session each time with a pushover mouse that was easy to defeat.

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