单选题 Section A
Directions: In this section, there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers A, B, C and D.Choose the best answer and mark your answer on the Answer Sheet.

Passage One  

If you’ve ever hosted a mouse as a house guest, you know they can be incredibly clever at finding your food.And that makes sense.

“They had to become better in traits like problem solving because we became better at hiding our food from them.”
Anja Guenther is with the Max Planck Institute in Germany.She says that battle of the minds has made mice craftier over time.
“The longer the mice lived with humans, the better they are at problem-solving.”
You see, there are more than a dozen subspecies of house mice worldwide.And each began cohabitating with humans at different times in our evolutionary history.For example...
“Mus musculus domesticus.”
It began raiding human pantries around 12,000 years ago.
“Mus musculus musculus.”
Our relationship with them began some 8,000 years ago.
“And Mus musculus castaneus.”
It’s a relative newcomer who began cohabitating only 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.
And that spread in evolutionary life histories, with constituents from all three groups, gave Guenther’s team an opportunity.They gathered 150 mice—representing all three groups—and tested them with seven different food puzzles.Each puzzle was baited with a mealworm, which the mice could only get by pushing or pulling a lid, for example, or extracting a ball of paper from a tube or opening the window of a Lego house.
And they found that the longer a mouse variety had lived with humans, the more likely it was to solve these food puzzles.
“So, basically, what we are left at, with trying to explain these results that we see, is that the mice really developed higher enhanced cognitive abilities while living with humans.”
The results appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
As the human footprint on the globe expands, Guenther says it’s more important than ever to understand how we influence animal minds to learn why some creatures, like house mice, adapt— while others simply die out.What is the significance of the research on mice?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】纵观全文以及文中倒数第一段第一句“it’s more important than ever to understand how we influence animal minds to learn why some creatures, like house mice, adapt— while others simply die out.”可知研究老鼠能够更加理解人类对动物的影响,因此A选项正确。B、C、D在文中均未体现,故排除。
【全文翻译】
  如果家里曾经有老鼠做客,你就会知道它们在寻找食物方面非常聪明。这是有道理的。
“它们必须在解决问题等方面变得更好,因为我们越来越善于隐藏食物。”
  安雅·冈瑟(Anja Guenther)就职于德国马克斯·普朗克研究所。她说,随着时间的推移,思想斗争使老鼠变得更加狡猾。
“老鼠和人类一起生活的时间越长,它们解决问题的能力就越强。”
  你看,全世界有十几个家鼠亚种。它们都是在我们进化史的不同时期开始与人类同居的。例如……
“西欧家鼠。”
  大约在12000年前,它开始袭击人类的食品储藏室。
“小白鼠。”
  我们与他们的关系始于大约8000年前。
“还有栗鼠。”
  相对来说,它是3000到5000年前才开始同居的新物种。
  在生命进化史中,这一基因的传播包括三个群体的成分,这给冈瑟的团队一个机会。他们收集了150只老鼠——代表了所有三组——并用7个不同的食物谜题测试它们。每个谜题都以粉虫作为诱饵,比如,老鼠只能通过推或拉一个盖子,或从管子中取出一个纸团或打开乐高房子的窗户来获得粉虫。
  他们发现,老鼠与人类生活的时间越长,就越有可能解决这些食物难题。
“所以,基本上,针对看到的结果我们的解释是:老鼠在与人类生活时认知能力确实得到更好的发展。”
  这项研究结果发表在《英国皇家学会学报B》上。
  冈瑟说,随着人类在地球上的足迹不断扩大,了解人类是如何影响动物的思维,从而了解为什么有些动物(如家鼠)能够适应环境而有些动物却灭绝了,这比以往任何时候都更加重要。