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Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as “all too human,” with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well.
The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food readily. Above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males.现代
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Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan’s and Dr. de Waal’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different.
In the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to induce resentment in a female capuchin.
The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social em
otions. In the wild, they are a co-operative, group-living species. Such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.
中小企业经营策略21. In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by C .
[A] posing a contrast
[B] justifying an assumption
[C] making a comparison
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学报 [D] explaining a phenomenon 22. The statement “it is all too monkey” (Last line, Paragraph l) implies that B .
[A] monkeys are also outraged by slack rivals
[B] resenting unfairness is also monkeys’ nature
课堂内外初中版 [C] monkeys, like humans, tend to be jealous of each other
[D] no animals other than monkeys can develop such emotions
23. Female capuchin monkeys were chosen for the research most probably because they are A .
[A] more inclined to weigh what they get
[B] attentive to researchers’ instructions
[C] nice in both appearance and temperament
[D] more generous than their male companions
24. Dr. Brosnan and Dr. de Waal have eventually found in their study that the monkeys
C .
[A] prefer grapes to cucumbers
[B] can be taught to exchange things
[C] will not be co-operative if feeling cheated
[D] are unhappy when separated from others
25. What can we infer from the last paragraph?
[A] Monkeys can be trained to develop social emotions.B
[B] Human indignation evolved from an uncertain source.
[C] Animals usually show their feelings openly as humans do.
[D] Cooperation among monkeys remains stable only in the wild.
Text 2
对比分析法
Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
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