2018年12月四级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 1 原文翻译及答案解析

The latest in cat research reveals that the lovely animal seems to have a basic grasp on both the laws of physics and the ins and outs of cause and effect.

最新的猫咪研究表明，这种可爱的动物似乎对物理定律和因果关系的基本原理有初步的掌握。

According to a newly published study, cats seem to be able to predict the location of hiding prey (猎物) using both their ears and an inborn (天生的) understanding of how the physical world works.

根据一项新发表的研究，猫咪似乎能够利用它们的耳朵以及对物理世界运作方式的天生理解来预测隐藏猎物的位置。

In a recent experiment, Japanese researchers taped 30 domestic cats reacting to a container that a team member shook. Some containers rattled (发出响声); others did not. When the container was tipped over, sometimes an object fell out and sometimes it didn't.

在最近的一项实验中，日本研究人员记录了30只家猫对团队成员摇晃的容器的反应。一些容器会发出响声，而另一些则不会。当容器被倾倒时，有时会有物体掉出，有时则没有。

It turns out that the cats were remarkably smart about what would happen when a container was tipped over. When an object did not drop out of the bottom of a rattling container, they looked at it for a longer time than they did when the container behaved as expected.

结果表明，猫咪对于容器倾倒后会发生什么表现得非常聪明。当物体没有从发出响声的容器底部掉出时，它们注视容器的时间比容器按预期行为时更长。

"Cats use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds to predict the appearance of invisible objects," lead researcher Saho Takagi says in a press release. The researchers conclude that cats' hunting style may have developed based on their common-sense abilities to infer where prey is, using their hearing.

“猫咪利用对噪音或声音的因果逻辑理解来预测不可见物体的出现，”首席研究员高木佐保在新闻稿中表示。研究人员得出结论，猫咪的狩猎方式可能是基于它们利用听觉推断猎物位置的常识能力发展而来的。

Scientists have explored this idea with other endearing creatures: babies. Like cats, babies appear to engage in what's called "preferential looking"—looking longer at things that are interesting or unusual than things they perceive as normal.

科学家们已经在其他可爱的生物——婴儿身上探索了这一观点。与猫咪类似，婴儿似乎也参与所谓的“偏好性注视”——对有趣或不寻常事物的注视时间比他们认为正常的事物更长。

When babies' expectations are violated in experiments like the ones performed with the cats, they react much like their animal friends. Psychologists have shown that babies apparently expect their world to comply with the laws of physics and cause and effect as early as two months of age.

当婴儿的预期在类似与猫咪进行的实验中被违反时，他们的反应与他们的动物朋友非常相似。心理学家已经表明，婴儿早在两个月大时就明显期望他们的世界遵守物理定律和因果关系。

Does the study mean that cats will soon grasp the ins and outs of cause and effect? Maybe. Okay, so cats may not be the next physics faculty members at America's most important research universities. But by demonstrating their common sense, they've shown that the divide between cats and humans may not be that great after all.

这项研究是否意味着猫咪将很快掌握因果关系的细节？也许吧。好吧，所以猫咪可能不会成为美国最重要研究大学的下一批物理教员。但通过展示它们的常识，它们表明猫咪与人类之间的差距可能并没有那么大。