Science is finally beginning to embrace animals who were, for a long time, considered second-class citizens. As Annie Potts

admin2017-10-26  39

问题     Science is finally beginning to embrace animals who were, for a long time, considered second-class citizens.
    As Annie Potts of Canterbury University has noted, chickens distinguish among one hundred chicken faces and recognize familiar individuals even after months of separations. When given problems to solve, they reason: hens trained to pick colored buttons sometimes choose to give up an immediate(lesser)food reward for a slightly later(and better)one. Healthy hens may aid friends, and mourn when those friends die.
    Pigs respond meaningfully to human symbols. When a research team led by Candace Croney at Penn State University carried wooden blocks marked with X and O symbols around pigs, only the O carriers offered food to the animals. The pigs soon ignores the X carriers in favor of the O’s. Then the team switched from real-life objects to a T-shirts printed with X or O symbols. Still, the pigs ventured only toward the O-shirted people: they had transferred their knowledge to a two-dimensional format, a not-inconsiderable feat of reasoning.
    Fairly soon, I came to see that along with our closest living relatives, cetaceans(鲸目动物)too are masters of cultural learning, and elephants express profound joy and mourning with their social companions. Long-term studies in the wild on these mammals helped to fuel a perspective shift in our society: the public no longer so easily accepts monkeys made to undergo painful procedures in laboratories, elephants forced to perform in circuses, and dolphins kept in small tanks at theme parks.
    Over time, though, as I began to broaden out even further and explore the inner lives of fish, chicken, pigs, goats, and cows, I started to wonder: Will the new science of "food animals" bring an ethical revolution in terms of who we eat? In other words, will the breadth of our ethic start to catch up with the breadth of our science?
    Animals activists are already there, of course, committed to not eating these animals. But what about the rest of us? Can paying attention to the thinking and feeling of these animals lead us to make change in who we eat?
According to Annie Potts, hens’ choice of a later and better reward indicates their ability of________.

选项 A、social interaction
B、facial recognition
C、logical reasoning
D、mutual learning

答案C

解析 推理题。A.“social interaction社会互动”,B.“facial recognition面部识别”,C. “logical reasoning逻辑推理”,D.“mutual learning互相学习”。在本文第二段第二行 “When given problems to solve,they reason:hens trained to pick colored buttons sometimes choose to give up an immediate(lesser)food reward for a slightly later(and better)one.” 可以得出答案, “hens’choice of a later and better reward indicates their ability of logical reasoning.
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/OoJjFFFM
0

最新回复(0)