I think you hit an interesting example. What if there was a significant difference in insulating properties of squirrel tails? That could lead to new ways of m

I think you hit an interesting example. What if there was a significant difference in insulating properties of squirrel tails? That could lead to new ways of making insulating fabrics. Quite a few of my research papers look like "we investigated reasonable question X. The answer turned out to be boring". Does that mean I shouldn't have done the work? We didn't know the answer would be boring in advance. Should I not publish? Then someone else might repeat the work. I think, if anything, science needs to publish more boring negative results, to stop people repeating the same boring experiments and not publishing.