2005年Text 1

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, which have all the necessary ingredients to capture the public imagination. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food readily. Above all, like their finicky female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of "goods and services" than males (although why this is so remains a mystery).

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 swap 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 (in the absence of an actual monkey able to eat it) was enough to induce sullen behaviour in a female capuchin.

Dr Brosnan and Dr de Waal report that such behaviour is unusual in their trained monkeys. During two years of bartering prior to these experiments, failure to exchange tokens for food occurred in fewer than 5% of trials. And what made the behaviour even more extraordinary was that these monkeys forfeited food that they could see-and which they would have readily accepted in almost any other set of circumstances.

The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions. 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 35m years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

23. 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.

[答案] A

[解題思路]

本文的對應信息在文章的第二段。第二段中先談到了母卷尾猴的特征有cute, good-natured, cooperative, share food readily等，這些分別與B、C、D選項符合。下一句話提到，最重要的是，"它們往往比雄性猴子更注重商品和服務的價值"，這才是最重要的原因。A選項中"weigh"這個詞的意思是"衡量"，該次是解題的關鍵，但是也可以通過排除其他三個選項得出正確答案。

[題目譯文]

母卷尾猴之所以被選為研究對象的最重要原因是它們
[A] 更會權衡它們得到的東西
[B] 認真聽研究人員的指揮
[C] 外表和性情都很好
[D] 比公卷尾猴更加大方

24. 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.

[答案] C

[解題思路]

本文的對應信息在文章的最后一段，"Such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated"（這種合作只有在每只猴子感到自己沒有受到欺騙時才可能穩定），也就是說如果它們感到自己受騙、就不會合作。A、B選項在文中都有提及，但不是研究成果。D選項的錯誤在于文中并沒有提到這一點。

[題目譯文]

Brosnan博士和de Waal博士最終在他們的研究中發現猴子
[A] 比起黃瓜更喜歡葡萄
[B] 能夠學會交換東西
[C] 如果感到受騙就會拒絕合作
[D] 在于其它猴子分開時就會不開心

　　相關推薦：考研英語閱讀理解命題思路透析和真題揭秘
　　　　　　　2009年考研英語歷年真題閱讀理解精讀筆記匯總