单选题
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 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 tardily. Above all, like their
female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value
of goods and services" than males. 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 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 reduce resentment in
a female capuchin. The researches suggest that capuchin
monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions, in the wild, they are a
co-operative, groupliving 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.
单选题
In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by ______.
A. posing a contrast
B. justifying an assumption
C. making a comparison
D. explaining a phenomenon
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】
单选题
The statement "it is all too monkey" (Last line, Para. 1) implies that
______.
A. monkeys are also outraged by slack rivals
B. resenting unfairness is also monkeys' nature
C. monkeys, like humans, tend to be jealous of each other
D. no animals other than monkeys can develop such emotions
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】
单选题
Female capuchin monkeys were chosen for the research most probably
because they are ______.
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
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】
单选题
Dr. Brosnan and Dr. de Waal have eventually found in their study that
the monkeys ______.
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
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】
单选题
What can we infer from the last paragraph?
A. Monkeys can be trained to develop social emotions.
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.