2015考研英语阅读理解精读P2-哲学.doc

2015考研英语阅读理解精读P2—哲学 　Passage 2 　　In this weeks Nature, a group of zoologists led by Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews in Scotland and Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have provided that evidence. They have synthesised the results from seven chimpanzee-research centres scattered across Africa, and shown that chimps can, indeed, do more than just pass on the odd behaviour pattern here and there. Individual groups of chimps exhibit behavioural“complexes that are recognisably different from those of other groups, yet seem to have no connection with environmental or genetic differences between the groups. If that is not culture, it is difficult to think what is. 　　The problem that confronted Dr Whiten and Dr Boesch was how to disentangle which of chimpanzees many behaviour patterns are genetically instinctive, which are learnt by individuals in isolation (and so are not cultural, because not copied from others) and which are culturally transmitted (by animals copying one another). They solved it by standardising the reports from the research centres, and paying as much attention to what the animals in each place did not do as to what they did. 　　Behaviour patterns found at all sites were deemed as likely to be genetic as cultural (leaf-sponging turned out to be in this category), as were those whose absence was due to some environmental factor (fishing algae out of ponds is impossible where there are no algae to fish). Nor were behaviour patterns that did not appear to be sporadic (digging for termites, rather than using a stick to fish for them) classified as cultural. They could just as well have been the result of individual invention, as of copying. 　　That still left 39 behaviour patterns that were common at some sites and absent from others. Termite fishing with twigs and the mid-ribs of leaves were two. So were breaking nuts open with a hammer (which could be done in four different ways, ea