托福閱讀材料之Here! Boy

　　Point at a ball and a dog will look at the ball, whereas a cat will probably look at your hand. Dogs seem to have a ready understanding of how human beings direct attention by pointing, and can follow our gestures almost as if they thought the same way we do.

　　Of course, dogs probably aren’t born knowing anything about people. We just carefully train them to look, fetch, and so on, right? Or do we? A comparative psychologist at the Max Plank Institute in Germany,named Michael Tomasello ran a series of tests on dogs,in which they had to find which sealed container had yummy dog food in it. The only hint they got was from a human being who looked at or pointed at the right container. This wasn’t hard for dogs at all.

　　But it was hard for wolves. Wolves that have been raised by people should have had the same success at finding the sealed container, but they didn’t. Even chimpanzees, which are very smart animals indeed, weren’t as fast at finding the food as dogs. What does this mean?

　　One interpretation is that dogs do, in fact, have a natural ability to understand forms of human communication. Even nine-week old puppies found the food, suggesting the skill is there before training. Wolves don’t have the skill, suggesting that it has developed in dogs since the time they branched off from their evolutionary predecessors.

　　There is debate about this idea. But Tomasello thinks that in the past fifteen thousand years, as human beings and dogs have evolved together, the basis for fido’s ability to understand what you mean may have become encoded in his genes.

　　當(dāng)人手指著球的時(shí)候，狗會(huì)看著球;而貓很可能看著手。似乎，狗能讀懂人的指示并執(zhí)行指示。狗和人類的思維方式好像是一致的。

　　當(dāng)然，狗不可能天生就知道人的想法，都是受過精心的訓(xùn)練：看、拿……是不是?德國(guó)普朗克學(xué)院的比較心理學(xué)家Michael Tomasello對(duì)狗進(jìn)行了一系列測(cè)試。他要求狗找出藏有美味食物的密封容器。而唯一的提示是人的眼神或指示。這項(xiàng)測(cè)試對(duì)狗而言是小菜一碟。

　　但是狼卻做不到。本以為一直受人撫養(yǎng)的狼也能準(zhǔn)確找出，可是，狼卻失敗了。甚至十分聰明的黑猩猩，也比不上狗的速度。為什么?

　　一種解釋是狗確實(shí)天生理解人溝通的方式。甚至是9周大的小狗都能找到食物，說明這種能力并非后天受訓(xùn)。而狼卻不具備這種能力，狗和狼雖有共同的祖先，但是由于進(jìn)化而形成差異。

　　雖然這一觀點(diǎn)備受爭(zhēng)議，但是Tomasello認(rèn)為，早在15000年前，人和狗都在進(jìn)化過程中，那時(shí)，狗已經(jīng)具備能力讀懂人的想法并代代相傳。