In a recent book entitled The Psychic Life of Insects, Professor Bouvier says that we must be careful not to credit the little w

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问题     In a recent book entitled The Psychic Life of Insects, Professor Bouvier says that we must be careful not to credit the little winged fellow with intelligence when they behave in what seems like an intelligent manner. They may be only reacting. I would like to confront the Professor with an instance of reasoning power on the part of an insect which cannot be explained away in any other manner.
    During the summer, while I was at work on my doctoral thesis, we kept a female wasp at our cottage. It was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it looked more like a wasp than a child of our own. That was one of the ways we told the difference.
    It was still a young wasp when we got it and for some time we could not get it to eat or drink, it was so shy. Since it was female, we decided to call it Miriam.
    One evening I had been working late in my laboratory fooling around with some gin and other chemicals, and in leaving the room I tripped over a line of diamonds which someone had left lying on the floor and knocked over my card index which contained the names and addresses of all the larvae worth knowing in North American. The cards went everywhere.
    I was too tired to stop to pick them that night. As I went, however, I noticed the wasp was flying about in circles over the scattered cards. "Maybe Miriam will pick them up", I said half laughingly to myself, never thinking for one moment that such would be the case.
    When I came down the next morning Miriam was still asleep in her box, evidently tired out. And well she might have been. For there on the floor lay the cards scattered all about just as I had left them the night before. The faithful little insect had buzzed about all night trying to come to some decision about picking them up and arranging them in the boxes for me, and then had figured out for herself that, as she knew practically nothing on larvae of any sort except wasp larvae, she would probably make more of a mess of rearranging them than if she had left them on the floor for me to fix. It was just too much for her to tackle, and discouraged, she went over and lay down in her box, where she cried herself to sleep.
Which of the following statements was based on facts rather than on the author’s pure thinking?

选项 A、Miriam cried herself to sleep.
B、Miriam had buzzed about all night.
C、Miriam could only tell wasp larvae.
D、Miriam had left the cards on the floor.

答案D

解析 虽然第1段提到作者想要借用Miriam说明昆虫具有智慧,但从最后一段的描述来看,到底Miriam是不是真的整晚围着卡片盘旋试图想办法捡起卡片,一切都只是作者的猜想而已,唯一可以确定的是卡片还在地上,可见,based on facts的只有D了。
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