评论
打印
We all know about the ancient and special bond between dogs and humans.
我们都知道狗和人类之间有历史悠久且特殊的关系。
Our canine friends can read our tone of voice and our expression
我们的狗类朋友可以读懂我们的音调和表达，
and they look into our eyes for clues that help our two species get along so well.
它们会从我们的眼睛中寻找线索，继而帮助两类物种之间和谐相处。
Well, move over rover because it turns out your house cat, far from being the aloof master of the house can do the same thing.
走开吧狗狗，因为家猫也可以做相同的事情，它们根本不是冷淡的主人。
In general we found that cats are very good in following human gazing signals.
一般而言，我们发现猫非常擅长追随人类的凝视信号。
In experiments researchers put two exactly alike bowls of food on the floor
在试验中，研究人员在地上放了两个盛满饭的碗，
but only look at one and guess which one the cat went to?
但只凝视一只碗，猜猜猫会去哪只碗？
Whether we do a sustained gaze when we don't take off our eyes from the target
不管是持续凝视，就是我们目不转睛地看着目标，
or we do a momentary gaze when we just look shortly on the target and then
或是短暂性凝视，我们看目标的时间很短，之后
turn back to the cat so independently of the difficulty or the level of difficulty of these gazing signals,
再回去看猫，无论是困难本身还是这些凝视信号的难度水平，
cats are very good in following it. The question these researchers are asking now
猫很擅长追随眼神，目前研究人员寻求的答案是，
is it just cats and dogs who've learned to do this because they have lived with us for so long?
是否只有猫狗可以学会这个，因为它们和我们生活时间长？
Or is this something that animals just do? Cats learn spontaneously that where humans look at, it can be important.
或者是动物都可以这么做？猫可以很自然地学会了人类凝视的方向，这一点很重要。
And this is a very interesting thing because then you could ask that, okay,
这一点是很有趣的，因为你会问好吧，
if it is not innate but the cats learn it, could any other animal learn it?
是否这不是天生的，而是后天学会的，其它动物可以做到吗？
This is the only test on this done so far but the results were clear.
这是唯一一个为此进行的测试，但结果很明了。
We establish whether the given cat performed better than picking randomly.
我们确定了指定猫是否比随机选择的表现好。
Our results showed that their success rate was 70 percent overall.
结果证实成功率大体在70%。
Researchers say one of the reasons it has taken so long to learn about this behaviour is because cats are notoriously hard to study.
研究人员称很久才了解了猫的这一行为，因为研究猫是出了名的难。
Evidently they just could not be bothered.
显然它们不想那么麻烦。
Kevin Enochs, VOA news
凯文·恩尼克斯，VOA新闻
