Question

【题目】Sheep Learned to Read Faces

①Which animals are smart? Your answer may be dogs, or elephants. Now there is one more animal on the list: sheep.

②According to a new study, sheep learned to recognize four famous people after being shown their pictures, suggesting these animals have face-recognition abilities similar to humans.

③Before testing, scientists let the sheep take a look at pictures of four famous people like former US President Barack Obama and British actress Emma Watson. Then the sheep went into a room with two computer screens. Each screen showed a human face looking straight ahead. One screen showed a famous person and the other screen showed a common person. The sheep were more likely to walk toward the screen showing the famous person. On average, they chose correctly in 8 out of 10 tests.

④After learning the animals’ ability to recognize famous people, researchers gave them a new task. They wanted to see if the farm animals could correctly recognize the same people shown from the side. The animals were still able to identify (识别) them, though they were a bit slower to recognize the pictures than before and they were correct less than 70% of the time.

⑤Finally, the researchers wanted to know if the sleep could recognize their trainers from a photo. Pictures of their trainers were randomly (随机地) shown on screens along with other unfamiliar faces. Without any training, the sheep could recognize their trainers.

⑥The results show that the animals’ face-recognition abilities are similar to those of monkeys, and humans.

⑦Face recognition is a difficult process (过程). But sheep have big brains. When they see other sheep, they use this process to recognize one another, said Jenny Morton, the lead researcher.

⑧The researchers plan to further study the sheep and find out if they can recognize different facial expression made by humans.

⑨The researchers hope that the study could shed light on certain brain diseases (疾病) such as Huntington’s disease, which affects (影响) abilities like facial recognition.

⑩We can’t say for sure, but it might help us understand how the disease starts, said Morton.

【1】Scientists found that sheep can .

A.become humans’ best friendB.be smarter than other animals

C.identify people by their namesD.recognize familiar human faces

【2】Which paragraphs describe how the scientists did the experiments?

A.①②③B.③④⑤C.⑥⑦⑧D.⑧⑨⑩

【3】What do the words “shed light on” in Paragraph 9 probably mean?

A.Make it easier to understand.B.Turn a very strong light on.

C.Find ways to solve problems.D.Keep trying new experiments.

Answer 1

【答案】

【1】D

【2】B

【3】A

【解析】

本文讲述了羊在看完四个名人图片后学会识别他们，表明羊面部识别能力与人类相似，研究者进一步研究羊，找到他们是否可以识别由人类做出的不同的面部表情。研究者希望这项研究可以揭示某些脑部疾病，莫顿说它可能会帮助我们理解疾病是怎么开始的。

【1】细节理解题。根据“According to a new study, sheep learned to recognize four famous people after being shown their pictures, suggesting these animals have face-recognition abilities similar to humans.”可知羊学会识别四个名人，表明羊面部识别能力与人类相似，故选D。

【2】推理判断题。根据“Before testing…”、“After learning the animals’ ability to recognize famous people, researchers gave them a new task…”、“Finally…”可知3、4、5段落描述了科学家们是如何做实验的，故选B。

【3】词义猜测题。根据“We can’t say for sure, but it might help us understand how the disease starts”可知它可能帮助我们理解疾病是如何开始的，所以此处是“让它更容易理解”，故选A。