Everybody is happy as his pay rises. Yet pleasure at your own can disappear if you learn that a fellow worker has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he is known as being lazy, you might even be quite cross. Such behavior is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying belief that other animals would not be able to have this finely developed sense of sadness. But a study by Sarah Brosnan 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 behaviors of some kind of female brown monkeys.
They look smart. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food happily. Above all, like females human beings, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males.
Such characteristics make them perfect subjects for Doctor Brosnan’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens（奖券）for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for pieces of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate and connected rooms, so that each other could observe what the other is getting in return for its rock, they became quite different.
In the world of monkeys, grapes are excellent goods（and much preferable to cucumbers）. So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was not willing 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 shook her own token at the researcher, or refused to accept the cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other room(without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to bring about dissatisfaction in a female monkey.
The researches suggest that these monkeys, like humans, are guided by social senses. In the wild, they are co-operative and group-living. Such co-operation is likely to be firm only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of anger when unfairly treated, it seems, are not the nature of human beings alone. Refusing a smaller reward completely makes these feelings clear to other animals of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness developed independently in monkeys and humans, or whether it comes from the common roots that they had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.
1．According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A．Only monkeys and humans can have the sense of fairness in the world.
B．Women will show more dissatisfaction than men when unfairly treated.
C．In the wild, monkeys are never unhappy to share their food with each other.
D．Monkeys can exchange cucumbers for grapes, for grapes are more attractive.
2．The underlined statement “it is all too monkey” means that                   .
A．monkeys are also angry with lazy fellows
B．feeling bitter at unfairness is also monkey’s nature
C．monkeys, like humans, tend to be envious of each other
D．no animals other than monkeys can develop such feelings
3．Female monkeys of this kind are chosen for the research most probably because they are                           .
A．more likely to weigh what they get
B．attentive to researchers’ instructions
C．nice in both appearance and behaviors
D．more ready to help others than their male companions
4．Which of the following conclusions is TRUE according to the passage?
A．Human beings’ feeling of anger is developed from the monkeys.
B．In the research, male monkeys are less likely to exchange food with others.
C．Co-operation between monkeys stays firm before the realization of being cheated.
D．Only monkeys and humans have the sense of fairness which dates back to 35 million years ago.
5．What can we infer about the monkeys in Sarah’s study?
A．The monkeys can be trained to develop social senses.
B．They usually show their feelings openly as humans do.
C．The monkeys may show their satisfaction with equal treatment.
D．Co-operation among the monkeys remains effective in the wild.

科目 英语   题型 阅读理解   难度 较易