2024年3月16日发(作者：)

全大学英语综合教程第一册

UNIT6

Unit 6 Animal Intelligence

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then

think over the following questions: 1. What do you

know about Michael Jackson? 2. How does he feel about

Ben? Why? 3. Do you think the song Ben reveals

something about the relationship between man and

animals? If so, what is it? 4. Is the song related to

the theme of the unit — animal intelligence? How?

Part II

Text A

Food, warmth, sleep? Their thoughts may be much deeper

than that.

WHAT ANIMALS REALLY THINK

Euqene Linden

Over the years, I have written extensively about

animal-intelligence experiments and the controversy

that surrounds them. Do animals really have thoughts,

what we call consciousness? Wondering whether there

might be better ways to explore animal intelligence

than experiments designed to teach human signs, I

realized what now seems obvious: if animals can think,

they will probably do their best thinking when it

serves their own purposes, not when scientists ask

them to. And so I started talking to vets, animal

researchers, zoo keepers. Most do not study animal

intelligence, but they encounter it, and the lack of

it, every day. The stories they tell us reveal what

I'm convinced is a new window on animal intelligence:

the kind of mental feats animals perform when dealing

with captivity and the dominant species on the planet

— humans.

Let's Make a Deal Consider the time Charlene Jendry, a

conservationist at the Columbus Zoo, learned that a

female gorilla named Colo was handling a suspicious

object. Arriving on the scene, Jendry offered Colo

some peanuts, only to be met with a blank stare.

Realizing they were negotiating, Jendry raised the

stakes and offered a piece of pineapple. At this point,

while maintaining eye contact, Colo opened her hand

and revealed a key chain. Relieved it was not anything

dangerous or valuable, Jendry gave Colo the pineapple.

Careful bargainer that she was, Colo then broke the

key chain and gave Jendry a link, perhaps figuring.

Why give her the whole thing if I can get a bit of

pineapple for each piece? If an animal can show skill

in trading one thing for another, why not in handling

money? One orangutan named Chantek did just that in a

sign-language study undertaken by anthropologist Lyn

Miles at the University of Tennessee. Chantek figured

out that if he did tasks like cleaning his room, he'd