今天前程百利小编为大家分享的是托福听力的背景学习。备考托福听力就要把听力文本吃透分析彻底。这样不仅能积累背景材料，还能把听力的专业词汇积累起来一块背诵，为托福听力打下坚实的基础。下面跟小编一起看一下黑猩猩是否真的会做饭?
A new study suggests that chimps have the cognitive skills necessary for cooking—such as patience—even if they don't control fire.
If you cozy up to a campfire this summer, ponder what Charles Darwin called, quote, "probably the greatest [discovery] ever made by man"—the control of fire. The anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham has argued that the control of fire—and thus, cooking—has actually shaped our bodies and our brains.
But cooking isn't just about controlling fire.
"When you think about cooking, it actually has a lot of complex components." Yale psychologist Alexandra Rosati.
"So you have to plan for the future, you have to have some self-control by refraining to eat raw food you already have right now, you might want to have some causal reasoning to understand how cooking transforms the food."
She and her colleague Felix Warneken, (VAR-neken) at Harvard, wanted to know if chimps also possess these basic cognitive qualities—even though they do not cook or control fire. So they performed a series of experiments in a chimp sanctuary in the Republic of [the] Congo. They confirmed—as past studies have—that chimps prefer cooked over raw food. But they also found that chimps will patiently refrain from eating raw food right in front of them if they think there's a chance it might get cooked. The chimps will even load raw food into what they thought was a "cooking device"—in reality a container with a false bottom, by which researchers would replace the raw food with cooked.
And chimps will even transport food across a room to one of those cooking devices, rather than eat it raw. At least sometimes.
"They'd often try to carry it with their mouth, because chimpanzees are knuckle walkers, and you'd almost see them accidentally eat the food on their way over, almost like "oops" they couldn't even resist, because they were carrying the food in their mouth." The results are in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: B.
The researchers say these findings suggest that the common ancestor of chimps and humans may have also had this predisposition to cooking—so when fire was discovered, cooking caught on fast.
But for chimps who might have serious culinary aspirations, there’s a catch.
"Cooking is sort of this very strange behavior because people do it together. Knowing something about the social behavior of chimps suggests that might actually be a really serious problem for them. So in contrast to humans, who will gather food and bring it back to a central location and cook it together, and share the food, chimps sort of eat on the go and they don't really share food in that kind of way. So this sort of social explanation suggests that could be a really serious constraint on the evolution of cooking."
Something else to chew on as you and your human friends gather round the grill this summer, sharing in the bounty.
疑难词汇：
cozy up 舒适的
campfire n. 营火;营火会
ponder vt. 仔细考虑;衡量vi. 考虑;沉思
anthropologist n. 人类学家;人类学者
primatologist n. 灵长类动物学家 (primatology的变形)
refraining n. 认知重整v. 克制(refrain的ing形式)
sanctuary n. 避难所;至圣所;耶路撒冷的神殿
knuckle n. 关节;指关节;指节;膝关节;肘vi. 开始认真工作vt. 用指关节敲打
oops int. 哎哟(表示惊讶，狼狈时所发的喊声)
culinary adj. 厨房的;烹调用的
bounty n. 慷慨;丰富;奖励金;赠款vt. 发给…奖金等;为…而发给赏金vi. 以赏金等形式发放
grill vt. 烧，烤;拷问vi. 烧，烤;严加盘问n. 烤架，铁格子;烤肉
长难句解析：
1. Knowing something about the social behavior of chimps suggests that might actually be a really serious problem for them.
难句类型：
That引导的宾语从句
句子主干：
Knowing something suggests that
难句拆分：
that might actually be a really serious problem for them，That引导的宾语从句，作suggest的宾语。
2. So in contrast to humans, who will gather food and bring it back to a central location and cook it together, and share the food, chimps sort of eat on the go and they don't really share food in that kind of way.
难句类型：
who引导的定语从句
句子主干：
they don't really share food
难句拆分：
who will gather food and bring it back to a central location and cook it together, and share the food, who引导的定语从句。
文本结构特点：
本篇文章主要讲的是科学研究表明黑猩猩有做饭的认知技能。因为黑猩猩比较有耐心，这样有利于他们学习做法。尽管他们不会控制火候。
好了，以上就是前程百利小编为大家整理的备考托福听力背景材料以及专业词汇的学习。大家学会了吗?希望能在备考托福的路上助大家一臂之力。预祝大家在托福考试中取得好成绩。
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