10.
阅读理解
Which animals are smart? Your answer may be
dogs or elephants. Now one more animal can be added to the list: the sheep.
Scientists said that sheep could be trained
to recognize (辨认) familiar (熟悉的) human faces, the BBC reported.
Before testing, scientists let the sheep
take a look at the pictures of four famous people, including former (先前的) US President Barack Obama and British actress Emma Watson. Then
the sheep went into a room with two computer screens. One screen showed a
famous person and the second screen showed a random (随机的) person. The sheep usually walked toward the screen with the famous
person.
After discovering the animals' ability to
recognize famous people, scientists gave them a new task. They wanted to see
whether the farm animals could correctly recognize the same people from
different directions. The animals were still able to recognize them, though
they were a bit slower to recognize the pictures than before.
Finally, the researchers wanted to know if
the sheep could recognize their trainers from a photo. Photos of their trainers
were shown on screens with some unfamiliar faces. They weren't given any
training, but the sheep could recognize their trainers.
The results show that the animals' face-recognition
abilities are similar to those of monkeys and humans.
The researchers said it might be
interesting in the future to find out whether sheep could recognize different
expressions on people's faces.