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  3. 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. I

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. I

admin2017-08-15  51
问题     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. But a study by Sarach 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, cooperative 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.
    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 (are 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 emotions. In the wild, they are a cooperative, group-living species. Such cooperation 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 for the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.
Dr. Brosnan and Dr. de Waal have eventually found in their study that the monkeys ______.
选项 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 other
答案C
解析 本题可参照文章的第3、4段。从中可知，两位研究人员花了两年时间教猴子用代币换取食物。正常情况下，猴子们非常乐意用石块换取黄瓜片；然而，当两个猴子被安置在隔开但相邻的猴舍时，每只猴子就都可能观察另一个猴子在用石块换取什么，它们的行为就变得明显不同。当研究人员递给一只猴子一颗葡萄以换取它的代币时，另一只猴子就不情愿拿它的代币只换取一片黄瓜。如果一只猴子不用交换代币就能获得一颗葡萄，那么另一只猴子要么把它的代币掷给研究人员，要么把代币扔出室外，要么拒绝接受那片黄瓜。由此可知：当猴子觉得受骗时，它们就不会同研究人员合作。C项与文章的意思相符。因此C项为正确答案。
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