新世纪研究生公共英语教材阅读BUnit

Unit 9

Animal Emotions

Laura Tangley

Sheer joy. Romantic love. The pain of mourning.

Scientists say pets and wild creatures have feelings, too.

1. Swimming off the coast of Argentina, a female right whale singles out just one of the suitors that are hotly pursuing her. After mating, the two cetaceans linger side by side, stroking one another with their flippers and finally rolling together in what looks like an embrace. The whales then depart, flippers touching, and swim slowly side by side, diving and surfacing in perfect unison until they disappear from sight.

2.In Tanzania, primatologists studying chimpanzee behavior recorded the death of Flo, a troop’s 50-year-old matriarch. Throughout the following day, Flo’s son, Flint, sits beside his mother’s lifeless body, occasionally taking her hand and whimpering. Over the next few weeks, Flint grows increasingly listless, withdrawing from the troop —despite his siblings’ efforts to bring him back–and refusing food. Three weeks after Flo’s death, the formerly healthy young chimp is dead, too.

3.A grief-stricken chimpanzee? Leviathans in love? Most people, raised on Disney versions of sentient and passionate beasts, would say that these tales, both true, simply confirm their suspicions that animals can feel intense, humanlike emotions. For their part, the nation’s 61 million pet owners need no convincing at all that pet dogs and cats can feel angry, morose, elated—even jealous or embarrassed. Recent studies, in fields as distant as ethology and neurobiology, are supporting this popular belief. Other evidence is merely anecdotal, especially for pets — dogs that become depressed, or even die, after losing a beloved companion, for instance. But the anecdote —or case study in scientific parlance—has now achieved some respectability among researchers who study animal behavior. As University of Colorado biologist Marc Bekoff says, “The plural of anecdote is data.”

4.Still, the idea of animals feeling emotions remains controversial among many scientists. Researchers’ skepticism is fueled in part by their professional aversion to anthropomorphism, the very nonscientific tendency to attribute human qualities to non-humans. Many scientists also say that it is impossible to prove animals have emotions using standard scientific methods —repeatable observations that can be manipulated in

controlled experiments —leading them to conclude that such feelings must not exist. Today, however, amid mounting evide nce to the contrary, “the tide is turning radically and rapidly,” says Bekoff, who is at the forefront of this movement.

5.Even the most strident skeptics of animal passion agree that many creatures experience fear —which some scientists define as a “primary” emotion that contrasts with “secondary” emotions such as love and grief. Unlike these more complex feelings, fear is instinctive, they say, and requires no conscious thought. Essential to escape predators and other dangers, fear — and its predictable flight, fight, or freeze responses — seems to be hard-wired into many species. Young geese that have never before seen a predator, for example, will run for cover if a hawk-shaped silhouette passes overhead. The shape of a nonpredatory bird, on the other hand, elicits no such response.

6.But beyond such instinctual emotions and their predictable behavioral responses, the possibility of more complex animal feelings —those that entail mental processing —is difficult to demonstrate. “I can’t even prove that another human being is feeling happy or sad,” says Bekoff, “but I can deduce how they’re feeling through body language and facial expression.” As a scientist who has conducted field studies of coyotes, foxes, and other canines for the past three decades, Bekoff also believes he can accurately tell what these animals are feeling by observing their behavior. He adds that animal emotions may actually be more knowable than those of humans, because they don’t “filter” their feelings the way we do.

7.Yet because feelings are intangible, and so tough to study scientifically, “most researchers don’t even want to talk about animal emotions,” says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and author of Affective Neuroscience. Within his field, Panksepp is a rare exception, who believes that similarities between the brains of humans and other animals suggest that at least some creatures have true feelings. “Imagine where we’d be in physics if we hadn’t infer red what’s inside the atom,” says Panksepp. “Most of what goes on in nature is invisible, yet we don’t deny that it exists.”

8.The new case for animal emotions comes in part from the growing acceptability of field observations, particularly when they are taken in aggregate. The latest contribution to this body of knowledge is a new book, The Smile of a Dolphin, which presents personal reports from more than 50 researchers who have spent their careers studying animals —from cats, dogs, bears, and chimps to birds, iguanas, and fish. Edited by Bekoff, who says it will finally “legitimize” research on animal emotions, the

volume has already garnered scientific attention, including a Smithsonian Institution symposium on the subject.

9. One of the most obvious animal emotions is pleasure. Anyone who has ever held a purring cat or been greeted by a bounding, barking,

tail-wagging dog knows that animals often appear to be happy. Beastly joy seems particularly apparent when the animals are playing with one another or sometimes, in the case of pets, with people.

10.Virtually all young mammals, as well as some birds, play, as do adults of many species such as our own. Young dolphins, for instance, routinely chase each other through the water like frolicsome puppies and have been observed riding the wakes of boats like surfers. Primatologist Jane Goodall, who has studied chimpanzees in Tanzania for four decades, says that chimps “chase, somersault, and pirouette around one another with the abandon of children.” In Colorado, Bekoff once watched an elk race back and forth across a patch of snow — even though there was plenty of bare grass nearby —leaping and twisting its body in midair on each pass. Though recent research suggests that play may help youngsters develop skills needed in adulthood, Bekoff says there’s no question that it’s also fun. “Animals at play are symbols of the unfettered joy of life,” he says

11.Grief also seems to be common in the wild, particularly following the death of a mate, parent, offspring, or even close companion. Female sea lions witnessing their pups being eaten by killer whales are known to actually wail. When a goose, which mates for life, loses its partner, the bird’s head and body droop dejectedly. Goodall, who saw the young chimp Flint starve after his mother died, maintains that the animal “died of grief.”

12.Elephants may be nature’s best-known mourners. Scientists studying these behemoths have reported countless cases of elephants trying to revive dead or dying family members, as well as standing quietly beside an animal’s remains for many days, periodically reaching out and touching the body with their trunks. Kenyan biologist Joyce Poole, who has studied African elephants since 1976, says these animals’ behavior toward their dead “leaves me with little doubt that they experience deep emotions and have some understanding about death.”

13.But there’s “hard” scientific evidence for animal feelings as well. Scientists who study the biology of emotions, a field still in its infancy, are discovering many similarities between the brains of humans and other animals. In animals studied so far, including humans, emotions seem to arise from ancient parts of the brain that are located below the cortex,

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新世纪研究生公共英语教材阅读B课文原文及翻译 Unit1 Party Politics Judith Martin 1. Etiquette at an office party? Why, these people have been socializing happily every working day of their lives, give or take a few melees, rumors, and complaint petitions. All it takes to turn this into holiday merriment is a bit of greenery looped around the office—the staff will soon be looped, too. Surely it is enough that the annual Christmas party has the magic ingredients: time off from work, free food and drink, and a spirit of fun replacing such ugly work realities as sexual harassment. 2. Furthermore, partygoers figure, it offers relief from such pesky obligations as thanking anyone or being kind to wallflowers because there really aren?t any hosts. Nobody has to pay (that same Nobody who generously provides the telephone line for long-distance personal calls), and so nobody?s feelings need be considered. 3. This is all pure hospitality—there for the taking, like the office-supplied felt-tipped pens everyone has been pocketing all year. Out of the natural goodness of its corporate heart and the spirit of the holiday season, the company wishes only to give its employees a roaring good time, and the employees, out of loyalty and the thrill of getting to know their bosses off-duty as equals, delight in the opportunity. 4. For those still dimly aware of the once-standard give-and-take of real social life, this no-fault approach to business entertaining seems a godsend. In the now-rare domain of genuine society, hosts are supposed to plan and pay for the entertainment of their guests, on their own time and in their own houses. Guests have strict duties, as well—from answering invitations to cooperating with all arrangements, even to the extent of pronouncing them perfectly lovely. 5. Business entertaining appears to remove the burdens of time, effort, money, individual responsibility—and the etiquette connected with them. The people who do the planning are paid for their trouble, so those who benefit need not consider they have incurred a debt. Why, the annual Christmas party ought to be an inspiration to lower-level employees to work their way into realms where company-sponsored partying can be enjoyed all year long. 6. Not so fast. Flinty Miss Manners does not recognize any holidays from etiquette. (Employees, if not employers, should consider themselves lucky that she is only on the Party Committee, not the one that might take up ethical questions about those pens and calls.) Office parties differ from private ones but are no freer from rules. 7. If it were indeed true that everyone has a better time without etiquette, Miss Manners could easily be persuaded to take the day off. But having long served on the Office Party Etiquette Cleanup subcommittee, she is aware that things generally do not go well when there is no recognized etiquette and everyone is forced to improvise. 8. Let us look at all this spontaneous, carefree fun: There being no proper place for the boss, he or she hangs around the door, concerned about mixing with everyone. It might discourage hospitable bosses to see guests staring at them in horror and then slithering in by a side door. But etiquette?s solution of having everyone greeted in a receiving line was rejected as too stiff. So one can hardly blame employees for recalling a long-ingrained principle of the workplace: Seeing the boss and having a good time are best not scheduled at the same time. 9. Desperate to make the time count, the boss grabs the nearest available person and starts

新世纪研究生公共英语教材B-unit10

Is Science Dangerous Does society need protecting from scientific advances? Most emphatically not, so long as scientists themselves and their employers are committed to full disclosure of what they know. 1、The idea that knowledge is dangerous is deeply embedded in our culture. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the biblical Tree of Knowledge, and in ’s Paradise Lost the serpent addresses the Tree as the ‘Mother of Science’. The archangel Raphael advises Adam to be “lowly wise” when he tries to question him about the nature of the Universe. Indeed, Western literature is filled with images of scientists meddling with nature, with disastrous results. Scientists are portrayed as a soulless group, unconcerned with ethical issues. 2、But is science in fact dangerous, and do scientists have special social responsibilities? It is essential to recognize that reliable scientific knowledge has no moral or ethical value. Science tells us how the world is: that we are not at the center of the Universe is neither good nor bad, nor is the possibility that genes could influence our intelligence or behavior. 3、Dangers and ethical issues come into play when scientific research is done in practice, for example in experiments involving humans and other animals or when science is applied to technology, or in issues related to safety. There is thus an important distinction between science and technology: between knowledge and understanding on the one hand, and the application of that knowledge to making something, or using it in some practical way, on the other. 4、Science produces ideas about how the world works, whereas the ideas in technology result in usable objects. Technology is much older than science and, unaided by any science, it gave rise to early crafts such as agriculture and metalworking. I would argue that science mad virtually no contribution to technology until the nineteenth century –even the great triumphs of engineering such as the steam engine and Renaissance cathedrals were built with imaginative trial and error, virtually without any impact of science. 5. Whatever new technology is introduced, it is not for scientists to make moral or ethical decisions about its use, as they have no special rights or skills in this regard. There is grave danger in asking scientists to be more socially responsible if they would also be given the right and authority to make such decisions on their own. The social obligations that scientists have, as distinct from those responsibilities they share with all citizens (such as supporting a democratic society and taking care of the rights of others), come from them having access to specialized knowledge of how the world works that is not easily accessible to others. Their obligation is to make public any social implications of their work and its technological applications, and to give some assessment of its reliability. In most areas of science it matters little to the public whether a particular theory is right or wrong, but in some areas, such as human and plant genetics, it matters a great deal. 6. When the facts are examined dispassionately, it is not easy to find cases where scientists have behaved unethically in relation to the public. Contrary to some claims, there is no evidence that they did so either in the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the and else where or in the AIDS blood scandal currently reverberating in , for example.