2. 外语
  3. Sleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic (脑电图仪的) sense we share it with all the primates (灵长类动物) and almost all the

Sleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic (脑电图仪的) sense we share it with all the primates (灵长类动物) and almost all the

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问题     Sleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic (脑电图仪的) sense we share it with all the primates (灵长类动物) and almost all the other mammals and birds: it may extend back as far as the reptiles (爬行动物).
    There is some evidence that the two types of sleep, dreaming and dreamless, depend on the life style of the animal, and that predators (食肉动物) are statistically much more likely to dream than prey, which are in turn much more likely to experience dreamless sleep. In dream sleep, the animal is powerfully immobilized (使固定不动) and remarkably unresponsive to external stimuli. Dreamless sleep is much shallower, and we have all witnessed cats or dogs cocking their ears to a sound when apparently fast asleep. The fact that deep dream sleep is rare among prey today seems clearly to be a product of natural selection, and it makes sense that today, when sleep is highly evolved, the stupid animals are less frequently immobilized by deep sleep than the smart ones. But why should they sleep deeply at all? Why should a state of such deep immobilization ever have evolved?
    Perhaps one useful hint about the original function of sleep is to be found in the fact that dolphins and whales and aquatic mammals in general seem to sleep very little. There is, by and large, no place to hide in the ocean. Could it be that, rather than increasing an animal’s vulnerability, Ray Meddis of London University has suggested this to be the case. It is conceivable that animals that are too stupid to be quite on their own initiative are, during periods of high risk, immobilized by the implacable arm of sleep. The point seems particularly clear for the young of predatory animals. This is an interesting notion and probably at least partly true.
Compare with dreamless sleep, deep dream sleep is _____.
选项 A、not the result of natural selection
B、less likely to appear to primates
C、more protective to the animals
D、at a higher stage of evolution
答案D
解析 根据第2段倒数第3句及末句，可以推断与无梦睡眠相比，深睡不动处于更高的进化阶段。文中虽有提及无梦睡眠对于被捕食动物来说是一种自然选择，但并不意味着深睡不动不是自然选择。因此A不正确；该句也提到“笨拙的动物与敏捷的动物相比，更少有深睡不动的时候”，primates属于smart ones，因此更有可能深睡不动，B与此相悖；文中暗示无梦睡眠使低级动物更警觉，从而起到一定的保护作用，C正好与这种理解相反，因此也不正确。
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