Fair and square
Some monkeys seem to have a highly developed sense of fairness
EVERYBODY loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal 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 behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys, which have all the necessary ingredients to capture the public imagination. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food readily. Above all, like their finicky female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males (although why this is so remains a mystery).
Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr Brosnan's and Dr de Waal's study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to swap pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different.
In the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant 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 tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (in the absence of an actual monkey able to eat it) was enough to induce sullen behaviour in a female capuchin.
Dr Brosnan and Dr de Waal report that such behaviour is unusual in their trained monkeys. During two years of bartering prior to these experiments, failure to exchange tokens for food occurred in fewer than 5% of trials. And what made the behaviour even more extraordinary was that these monkeys forfeited food that they could see—and which they would have readily accepted in almost any other set of circumstances.
The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions. In the wild, they are a co-operative, group-living species. Such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35m years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.
總體介紹
這是2003年9月18日刊登在《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家》（The Economist）雜志上的一篇科技類文章。文中主要論述猴子的公平感---像人一樣，對(duì)不公平待遇有怨恨。從文章的題材上講，科技類的文章是考研英語閱讀的四大題材之一(另外三類是經(jīng)濟(jì)評(píng)論、文化教育和社會(huì)生活)，而且這篇文章談?wù)摰氖禽^新的科學(xué)研究成果（《自然》雜志剛發(fā)表的文章），以簡(jiǎn)介的形式出現(xiàn)于《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家》雜志，自然很適合做考研英語閱讀的出題文章。從體裁上看，這是一篇典型的說明文，屬于考研英語閱讀的常見體裁之一。這篇文章共有6段，520詞，如果用作考研英語閱讀理解的一篇，則段落和字?jǐn)?shù)都有些偏多。因?yàn)樵摬糠值奈恼乱话阋髮⒆謹(jǐn)?shù)控制在400詞左右；文章段落數(shù)一般為4-5段，便于出題。
這篇文章被用于2005年的考研英語閱讀理解部分第一篇，距發(fā)表時(shí)間僅一年多，試題序號(hào)為21-25。文中加下劃線的部分是被刪除的內(nèi)容。改編后的文章共5段，426詞。
原文改編
命題人主要對(duì)原文進(jìn)行以下幾方面的改編：
一、刪去文章標(biāo)題。文章標(biāo)題概括文章的主題，如果出現(xiàn)，文章大意就未睹先知。為了測(cè)試對(duì)文章主題和其他內(nèi)容的理解，閱讀理解原文的標(biāo)題都要?jiǎng)h去，讓考生根據(jù)文章的內(nèi)容去總結(jié)和把握。如這篇文章的副標(biāo)題Some monkeys seem to have a highly developed sense of fairness在考題中就未出現(xiàn)。
二、壓縮文章字?jǐn)?shù)。為了把文章字?jǐn)?shù)控制在要求的范圍內(nèi)，可有可無的細(xì)節(jié)、不影響文章總體結(jié)構(gòu)的細(xì)節(jié)內(nèi)容都要?jiǎng)h除。這篇文章第二段的劃線部分和第五段全段被刪去的原因就是如此。
三、替換超綱詞匯。為了將超綱詞匯控制在要求的范圍內(nèi)（全文的3%），也為了便于考生真正發(fā)揮閱讀水平，有些超綱詞匯被替換。如這篇文章第四段末句中的sullen behaviour（sullen為超綱詞匯）在考題中被替換為綱內(nèi)詞匯resentment。
四、改編其他方面。有時(shí)，為了使文章語言更加精煉，結(jié)構(gòu)更加嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)，在刪去部分內(nèi)容后，相鄰段落被合并。為了使上下文連貫起來，有時(shí)也改寫原文。
改編后的文章不僅沒有破壞原文的結(jié)構(gòu)和內(nèi)容，反而顯得更加精煉：結(jié)構(gòu)嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)，層次清晰。第一段以人為類比---人對(duì)于不公平待遇的反應(yīng)是非常憤怒，接著指出研究者最近通過對(duì)僧帽猴的分組實(shí)驗(yàn)證明這不僅僅是人類的特性，也是猴子的特性。這是研究結(jié)論。后面是對(duì)有關(guān)實(shí)驗(yàn)的各個(gè)方面的敘述：如第二段的實(shí)驗(yàn)對(duì)象的選定，第三段和第四段的實(shí)驗(yàn)的具體內(nèi)容。末段與第一段相呼應(yīng)，并指出僧帽猴的公平感在進(jìn)化上的起源還無法確定。
