6．
Everybody is happy as his pay rises. Yet pleasure at
your own can disappear if you learn that a fellow worker has been given a
bigger one. Indeed, if he is known as being lazy, you might even be quite
cross. Such behavior is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying belief
that other animals would not be able to have this finely developed sense of
sadness. But a study by Sarah Brosnan 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 behaviors of some kind of
female brown monkeys. They look smart. They are good-natured, co-operative
creatures, and they share their food happily. Above all, like female human
beings, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and
services” than males.
Such characteristics make them perfect subjects for
Doctor Brosnan’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys
to exchange tokens (奖券) for food. Normally, the monkeys were
happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for pieces of cucumber. However, when
two monkeys were placed in separate and connected rooms, so that each other
could observe what the other is getting in return for its rock, they became
quite different.
In the world of monkeys，grapes
are excellent goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was
handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was not willing 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 shook her own
token at the researcher, or refused to accept the cucumber. Indeed, the mere
presence of a grape in the other room (without an actual monkey to eat it) was
enough to bring about dissatisfaction in a female monkey.
The researches suggest that these monkeys, like
humans, are guided by social senses. In the wild, they are co-operative and
group-living. Such co-operation is likely to be firm only when each animal
feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of anger when unfairly treated, it
seems, are not the nature of human beings alone. Refusing a smaller reward
completely makes these feelings clear to other animals of the group. However,
whether such a sense of fairness developed independently in monkeys and humans,
or whether it comes from the common roots that they had 35 million years ago,
is, as yet, an unanswered question.
1.According to the passage, which of the following
statements is TRUE?
A．Only monkeys
and humans can have the sense of fairness in the world.
B．In the wild,
monkeys are never unhappy to share their food with each other.
C．Women will
show more dissatisfaction than men when unfairly treated.
D．Monkeys can
exchange cucumbers for grapes, for grapes are more attractive.
2.The underlined statement “it is all too monkey”
means that ________.
A．monkeys are
also angry with lazy fellows
B．monkeys, like
humans, tend to be envious of each other
C．no animals
other than monkeys can develop such feelings
D．feeling angry
at unfairness is also monkey’s nature
3.Female monkeys of this kind are chosen for the
research most probably because they are _________.
A．more likely
to pay attention to the value of what they get
B．attentive to
researchers’ instructions
C．nice in both
appearance and behaviors
D．more ready to
help others than their male companions
4.We can learn ________according to the passage?
A．Human beings'
feelings of anger are developed from the monkeys.
B．Cooperation
between monkeys stays firm before the realization of being cheated.
C．In the
research, male monkeys are less likely to exchange food with others.
D．Only monkeys
and humans have the sense of fairness dating back to 35 million years ago.
5.What can we infer about the monkeys in Sarah’s
study?
A．The monkeys
can be trained to develop social senses.
B．The monkeys
may show their satisfaction with equal treatment.
C．They usually
show their feelings openly as humans do.
D．Cooperation
among the monkeys remains effective in the wild.