Question

One day, Amy is digging in the ground for a potato when along comes Tom. Seeing that there is no one in sight, Tom starts to scream. Tom’s angry mother rushes over and drives Amy away. Once his mum has gone, Tom helps himself to Amy’s potato.

We’ve all experienced similar annoying tricks when we were young—the brother who stole your ball and then got you into trouble by telling your parents you had hit him. But Amy and Tom are not humans. They’re African baboons(狒狒). ____1._

Tom’s scream and his mother’s attack on Amy could have been a matter of chance, but Tom was later seen playing the same tricks on others. __2.___

Studying behavior like this is complicated but scientists discovered apes(猿) clearly showed that they intended to cheat and knew when they themselves had been cheated. __3.___ An ape was annoying him, so he tricked her into going away by pretending he had seen something interesting. When she found nothing, she “walked back, hit me over the head with her hand and ignored me for the rest of the day.”

Another way to decide whether an animal’s behavior is deliberate is to look for actions that are not normal for that animal. A zoo worker describes how an ape dealt with an enemy. “He slowly stole up behind the other ape, walking on tiptoe. When he got close to his enemy, he pushed him violently in the back, then ran indoors.” Wild apes do not normally walk on tiptoe. ___4.___ But looking at the many cases of deliberate trickery in apes, it is impossible to explain them all as simple copying.

It seems that trickery does play an important part in ape societies. ___5.__ Studying the intelligence of our closest relative could be the way to understand the development of human intelligence.

A. An amusing example of this comes from a psychologist working in Tanzania.

B. And playing tricks is as much a part of monkey behavior as it is of human behavior.

C. So the psychologists asked his colleagues if they had noticed this kind of trickery.

D. Of course it’s possible that it could have learnt from humans that such behavior works, without understanding why.

E. This use of a third individual to achieve a goal is only one of the many tricks commonly used by baboons.

F. The ability of animals to cheat may be a better measure of their intelligence than their use of tools.

G. In most cases the animal probably doesn’t know it is cheating.

Answer 1

1.B

2.A

3.E

4.D

5.F

【解析】

試題分析： 文章由一個小故事引起，寫了動物們理解人類智力的發展之路。

1. But Amy and Tom are not humans. They’re African baboons(狒狒)可知下面寫出的事狒狒和人類的不同點，所以選B。

2. behavior like this is complicated but scientists discovered apes(猿) clearly showed that they intended to cheat and knew when they themselves had been cheated可知當它們受騙的表現，所以A符合題意。

3. An ape was annoying him, so he tricked her into going away by pretending he had seen something interesting. 可知前面也有一個玩笑，所以選E。

4. is impossible to explain them all as simple copying.可知與D選項對應，所以選D。

5. the intelligence of our closest relative could be the way to understand the development of human intelligence.可知前文可能提到intelligence，所以選F。

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