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Six Things You Won’t Believe Animals Do Just like Us (II) 当前浏览器不支持播放音乐或语音，请在微信或其他浏览器中播放  6:28 动物的人类习性（下） 来自英语学习杂志 也许你是个文字工作者，会对错误的字词和语法异常敏感；也许你是个仲裁人，别人发生争端时唯你决断；也许你是个小商人，对以物易物、价格波动等颇为精通……然而，这些并非人类才会，有些动物也精于此道。Wait, what?!Birds Are Grammar Nazis[1]
Spend longer than a half second on the Internet and you’ll encounter someone so hung up on correct grammar usage that you suspect he’s got sentence diagrams where his ribs should be.[2] And if you haven’t, watch this: “Your my best friend.” Let’s see how many people flip their lids[3].
And for those of you who’d rather gouge out[4] your own eyes than use or read bad grammar, hey, we get it. After all, what’s the point of language if we ignore the rules? And wasn’t it the invention of language that propelled[5] humanity into civilization in the first place?
Well, hold your butts[6], kids, because some animals are just as concerned about good grammar as we are.
Bengal finches not only have rules of syntax when it comes to songs, but they also get mighty pissy when other finches break them.[7]
Researchers at Kyoto University recorded the tweets, chirps and chi-chi-chu-wee-reeeees of a group of finches,[8] then played the songs back to a different group. After a while, the scientists pulled a fast one by taking the same songs and jumbling them up[9]—forming new “sentences,” if you will. In most cases, the finches didn’t seem to care. But one version of the jumbled song made the finches go bananas[10].
They started screeching angrily—the kind of call usually reserved for intruding enemy finches.[11] The scientists tried playing the same sound sample again with another group, and they got pissed[12], too—virtually every finch that heard it, in fact. The scientists had accidentally created the finch song version of a your/you’re mistake.2. 在网上随便逛一下，你就会看到某个热衷于正确使用语法的人，让你不禁怀疑连他的肋骨都是句法构成的。encounter: 偶遇；be hung up on: 沉溺于；diagram: 图解。
6. hold your butts: 这里指“坐稳了，沉住气”，butt意为“屁股”。
7. Bengal finch: 孟加拉雀；syntax: 语法，句法；mighty: adv. 很，非常；pissy: 生气的，发怒的。
8. tweet: 啾啾叫；chirp: 啁啾，唧唧叫。
9. pull a fast one: 欺骗，捣鬼；jumble up: 使混乱。
11. screech: 尖叫；intruding: 闯入的，侵入的。
Chimps Rely on Third-Party Mediators to Resolve Disputes[13]
If you’re anything like us, sitting between two grownass adults who were so angry that they required two lawyers and a neutral third-party arbitrator to communicate with each other was the stuff childhood (and puppet therapy) was made of.[14]
It’s a pretty brilliant system: Two people who would rather chug a gallon of peanut oil than have a conversation just call in a professional to do the talking for them.[15] You might even say it’s one of the pinnacles[16] of human civilization.
Except, oh wait. Chimps have totally got the market on third-party mediators covered.
Chimpanzees have figured out that when the feces hits the fan[17], man chimps need to stay the hell away from each other. That’s when a very specific mediator walks into the picture: an older female.
Imagine two male chimpanzees are duking it out over who ate the last head lice or who pooted on Nuk-Nuk’s favorite tree or whatever.[18] Anyway, after the brawl, each male will sit and wait, presumably with his arms crossed and toes tapping, for the other to come over to reconcile.[19] If no one makes the first move, a female chimp will make it for them.
Here’s how: The female will approach one of the males and start grooming[20] him. You know, picking out dirt and bugs and gray hairs and whatnot[21] in order to help him calm down. Then she’ll walk over to the other male, making sure Fighter Male #1 follows. With Muhammad Ali on one side and Joe Frazier on the other,[22] the female lets them groom her, together, because grooming is calming as shit.
Then, she walks away, her job done. She intervened[23], and resolved their monkey conflict. The two males are left sitting together as friends, with neither losing face. We’re 95 percent sure this is exactly how the Cold War ended.13. chimp: 黑猩猩，下文中chimpanzee为正式用法；mediator: 调解人；dispute: 争论。
14. 你可能像我们一样经历过这样的童年（或是玩偶治疗法）：坐在两个所谓成熟的大人中间，他们吵得很凶，以至于要找两个律师和一个第三方仲裁人来帮助他们沟通。-ass: 十分，透顶（贬义，通常用以加强语气），这里的grownass实为反语；neutral: 中立的；arbitrator: 仲裁人；puppet therapy: 玩偶治疗法，即通过玩偶来帮助病人表达情感，学习社交技能。
15. 这个一个相当有效的办法：对于两个宁可喝掉一加仑花生油也不愿意坐下谈一谈的人来说，只要找一个专业人士帮助他们协调就好。chug: 一饮而尽；gallon: 加仑，1加仑约为3.8升。
17. the feces hits the fan: 出问题，遇麻烦，feces: 粪便。
18. duke it out: 打架，一决高下；head lice: 头虱；poot: 排出粪便。
19. brawl: 争吵；reconcile: 调停，和解。
20. groom: （动物）为（自己或另一动物）梳理皮毛。
22. Muhammad Ali: 拳王阿里，全名 穆罕默德·阿里，是世界拳坛上的人物；Joe Frazier: 乔·弗雷泽，世界上第一个击倒拳王阿里的美国拳击手。
As soon as we’re old enough to toddle toward the Hubba Bubba on the lowest shelf at the checkout aisle,[24] we get the concept of money. Money is what gets you food, toys and those lame ass OshKosh B’Gosh overalls your mom makes you wear.[25] Money is what puts some people on a throne and others in a sewage ditch.[26] Surely, this one part of human civilization is ours and ours alone.
Nope. Monkeys have also been proven able to comprehend, use and exploit[27] money.
First of all, it turns out that it’s not all that hard to teach monkeys to use a currency. In one experiment, it was just a matter of giving capuchin monkeys a bunch of silver discs, then demonstrating that they would get a treat when they turned one disc in to the researchers.[28] After just a few months, they picked up the idea that the discs had inherent value (chimpanzees figured it out even faster in another experiment, and were even taught to recognize different denominations of “currency”).[29]
And to be clear, exchanging the silver discs for treats wasn’t just some mindless “perform an action to get a prize” trick—the capuchin monkeys were found to respond logically to price fluctuations, buying less if the price rose and vice versa.[30]
And then, chaos ensued[31]. One monkey, called Felix, quickly ran to the chamber where the “coins” were kept, threw all them into the communal cage and then scurried back.[32] What the scientists had witnessed was a bank heist[33]. When the researchers went in to try and get the coins back, the monkeys put up a fight, only caving in once the scientists gave them treats.[34]24. toddle:（幼儿等）蹒跚行走； Hubba Bubba: 一个泡泡糖品牌；checkout: 收银台；aisle: 过道，走廊。
25. lame ass: 愚蠢的，蹩脚的； OshKosh B’Gosh: 美国知名的童装品牌；overall: 工作服，防护服。
26. 正是金钱让一些人有权有势，也让一些人跌落谷底。sewage ditch: 污水渠。
28. capuchin monkey: 卷尾猴；a bunch of: 一堆；treat: 款待。
29. inherent value: 固有价值； denomination: 面额。
30. mindless: 无需动脑的；price fluctuation: 价格波动；vice versa: 反之亦然。
32 chamber: 房间；communal: 公用的；scurry: 急匆匆地跑。
34. put up a fight: 奋勇抵抗；cave in: 认输。
以上内容节选自《英语学习》杂志2015年11月刊。版权所有，转载请注明出处。
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