Sheep, like turkeys and ostriches, are not considered the cleverest animals. British scientists said last Wednesday human may have underestimated(低估) the woolly creatures. They could be much smarter than we think.
Researchers at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, southern. England, have shown that animals have a good memory system and are extremely good at recognizing faces--which they think is a sure sign of intelligence.
Behavioral scientist Keith Kendrick and his friends trained 20 sheep to recognize and distinguish(区别) 25 pairs of sheep faces and used electrodes(电极) to measure their brain activity, which showed they could remember 50 faces for up to two years.
If they can do that with faces, the fact is that they have to have reasonable intelligence, otherwise, what is the point of having a system for remembering anything else, Kendrick said in an interview.
So hours of seemingly mindless eating grass may not be so mindless after all.
Kendrick believes sheep got their reputation as dumb animals because they live in large groups and do not appear to have much ind
ividuality and are frightened of just about everything.
All animals, including humans, once they are frightened don't tend to show signs of intelligent action, he explained.
In research reported in the science journal Nature, Kendrick and his team showed that sheep, like humans, have a specialized system in the brain, which allows them to distinguish between many different faces that look extremely similar.
The most important findings of the study is that they are able, both from a behavioral point of view and from looking at the way the brain is organized, to remember a large number of faces of individuals for a very long time, said Kendrick. It is a very strange system. They are showing similar abilities in many ways to humans.
【小题1】 From the first paragraph we can find that .A．people used to think sheep are smarter than the other animalsB．people used to raise sheep in a wrong wayC．people don't consider sheep as clever animalsD．people have done a lot of research on sheep【小题2】 From what Kendrick said in the interview we learn that .A．scientists have learned a lot about sheep's intelligenceB．scientists have learned little about sheep's intelligenceC．scientists can't do anything more about sheep's memoryD．scientists don't have to research animals' memory【小题3】 As is shown in the passage .A．sheep are among the weak animalsB．it is not right for people to raise sheep in groupsC．when sheep eat grass in the fields their minds may be activeD．if people feel frightened, they may bee more brave【小题4】 When scientists found that sheep show similar abilities in many ways to humans they may think it .A．worryingB．movingC．frighteningD．interestingC
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(答案→)C
解析：
【小题1】细节理解题。从文章第一段的三句话可以明显看出。
【小题2】细节理解题。Kendrick在采访中的几句话都带有推测和不肯定的语气，这表明目前人们对于绵羊的智力的研究还很少，没有肯定性的结论。
【小题3】细节理解题。从文章第五段So hours of seemingly mindless eating grass may not be SO mindless after a11．一句可以看出。
【小题4】推理判断题。根据常理推断，科学家们通过研究发现绵羊的智力在许多方面与人相似之后，会对这种现象非常感兴趣。其余三项根据不合常理，可以排除。