That people have personalities goes without saying. Pet owners will quickly argue that their animals have personalities too. Yet

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问题     That people have personalities goes without saying. Pet owners will quickly argue that their animals have personalities too. Yet rather little has been done to find out if such characteristics exist in wild animals. One such study, published recently in Animal Behavior, shows not only that some do, but also that the presence of such traits is skewing the way data are collected by researchers. The animals in question are birds—collared flycatchers, to be specific. A team of researchers monitored the courtship behavior of the birds. The 41 males observed were nesting in boxes long used by the species, and a single attractive female was placed in an enclosure on top of each box.
    First, the team measured the varying intensity of the courtship behaviors displayed by the 33 males that responded to the caged female. After they had collected enough data to act as a baseline, they then attached a white piece of paper to each of the boxes used by these males and watched how the males in question responded to this novelty. They found that roughly half seemed afraid of the paper and reduced their courtship of the female. The other half ignored the paper and continued displaying as they had done before. In the third phase of the experiment a male was placed in the cage over the box where the female had once been, and the amount of aggression towards this male from the nesting male was measured. In general, those males who had not been deterred by the presence of the paper attacked the newly presented competitor with vigor while those who had been intimidated by it seemed reluctant to attack the putative competitor.
    Another part of the study analyzed male willingness to fight in the presence of potential predators, by watching aggressive interactions between nesting males and caged competitors when an unfamiliar human slowly approached the site. Those males who had been afraid of the paper often fled when the human was as much as 20 meters away. Those who had continued their courtship in the presence of the paper again proved their courage and often kept fighting until the observing human was just two meters away. Lastly the team placed traps within the nesting boxes and monitored which birds were caught. They found that the aggressive, risk-taking males were twice as likely as non-risk-takers to be trapped.
    These results are interesting because this is the first time that differences in personality have been shown in wild birds. If birds, as well as mammals, have personalities, it may make it easier to study the evolutionary pressures that give rise to such systematically different ways of behaving within a single species.
By writing Paragraph 1, the author intends to______.

选项 A、advocate that pet animals do as well have traits
B、prove that little attention has been paid to the personalities of animals
C、introduce a study focusing on birds’ behaviors
D、state that people differ from animals because of personalities

答案C

解析 属逻辑关系题。文章第一句就讲到了个性这个问题,通过第二句和第三句将话题引到了动物的个性问题,进而开始介绍一项研究,而从第二段就开始细致地介绍这个研究,因此可知作者写第一段的目的就是为了引出这项研究,故选项C符合题意。选项A和B属于答非所问,选项D文中则根本未提到,属于无中生有,故均错误。
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