2019年7月6日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Ants Could Teach Ants

2019年7月6日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Ants Could Teach Ants

The ants are tiny and usually nest between rocks in the south coast of England. Transformed into research subjects at the University of Bristol, they raced along a tabletop foraging for food -and then, remarkably, returned to guide others. Time and again, followers trailed behind leaders, darting this way and that along the route, presumably to memorize land- marks. Once a follower got its bearings, it tapped the leader with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to the next step. The ants were only looking for food but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers -thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -marked the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behavior.

"Tandem running is an example of teaching, to our knowledge the first in a non-human animal, that involves bidirectional feedback between teacher and pupil," remarks Nigel Franks, professor of animal behavior and ecology, whose paper on the ant educators was published last week in the journal Nature.

No sooner was the paper published, of course, than another educator questioned it. Marc Hauser, a psychologist and biologist and one of the scientists who came up with the definition of teaching, said it was unclear whether the ants had learned a new skill or merely acquired new information.

Later, Franks took a further study and found that there were even races between leaders. With the guidance of leaders, ants could find food faster. But the help comes at a cost for the leader, who normally would have reached the food about four times faster if not hampered by a follower. This means the hypothesis that the leaders deliberately slowed down in order to pass the skills on to the followers seems potentially valid. His ideas were advocated by the students who carried out the video project with him.

Opposing views still arose, however. Hauser noted that mere communication of information is commonplace in the animal world. Consider a species, for example, that uses alarm calls to warn fellow members about the presence of a predator. Sounding the alarm can be costly, because the animal may draw the attention of the predator to itself. But it allows others to flee to safety. “Would you call this teaching?” wrote Hauser. “The caller incurs a cost. The naive animals gain a benefit and new knowledge that better enables them to learn about the predator’s location than if the caller had not called. This happens throughout the animal kingdom, but we don’t call it teaching, even though it is clearly transfer of information.”

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Questions 1-5

Look at the following statements (Questions 1-5) and the list of people in the box below.

Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 Animals could use objects to locate food.

2 Ants show two-way, interactive teaching behaviors.

3 It is risky to say ants can teach other ants like human beings do.

4 Ant leadership makes finding food faster.

5 Communication between ants is not entirely teaching.

List of People

A Nigel Franks

B Marc Hauser

C Tim Caro

D Bennett Galef Jr.

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