Point at a ball and a dog will look at the ball, whereas a cat will probably look at your hand. Dogs seem to have a ready understanding of how human beings direct attention by pointing, and can follow our gestures almost as if they thought the same way we do.

當你用手指向一個皮球時，狗會去看球，而貓很可能會去看你的手。狗似乎天生就懂得人們?nèi)绾斡檬种赶蚴挛飦硪鹚俗⒁猓夜纺茏駨娜藗兊氖謩?，就好象它們和我們用同樣的方式思考?/div>

Of course, dogs probably aren’t born knowing anything about people. We just carefully train them to look, fetch, and so on, right? Or do we? A comparative psychologist at the Max Plank Institute in Germany,named Michael Tomasello ran a series of tests on dogs,in which they had to find which sealed container had yummy dog food in it. The only hint they got was from a human being who looked at or pointed at the right container. This wasn’t hard for dogs at all.

當然，狗在出生時可能對人類一無所知。我們只是悉心地訓(xùn)練它們?nèi)タ矗旎匚锲?，等等，對嗎？德國馬克斯普朗克研究所的比較心理學(xué)家邁克爾托馬塞洛對狗做了一系列的測試，讓它們判斷，哪個封著的盒子里裝著美味的狗糧。而這些狗可以從一個人的指向得到提示。這對狗來說一點都不難。

But it was hard for wolves. Wolves that have been raised by people should have had the same success at finding the sealed container, but they didn’t. Even chimpanzees, which are very smart animals indeed, weren’t as fast at finding the food as dogs. What does this mean?

但是這對狼來說卻是很難的。按理說，被馴服的狼應(yīng)該和狗一樣順利地找到封著食物的盒子，然而它們卻沒有。甚至連黑猩猩這么聰明的動物也沒有狗找到食物快。這說明了什么呢？

One interpretation is that dogs do, in fact, have a natural ability to understand forms of human communication. Even nine-week old puppies found the food, suggesting the skill is there before training. Wolves don’t have the skill, suggesting that it has developed in dogs since the time they branched off from their evolutionary predecessors.

一種解釋是，實際上，狗確實擁有理解人類溝通方式的天賦。就連剛出生九個月的狗崽兒也能找到食物，這說明狗天生就具備這種能力，而不是靠訓(xùn)練得來的。狼不具備這種能力，這說明，狗在從它的先祖，狼科中分離出來起就逐漸進化出了這種能力。

There is debate about this idea. But Tomasello thinks that in the past fifteen thousand years, as human beings and dogs have evolved together, the basis for fido’s ability to understand what you mean may have become encoded in his genes.

這種觀點目前還有許多爭論。但托馬賽洛認為，在過去的1.5萬年里，人類和狗生活在一起，共同進化，這也為狗狗們能夠理解人們的意思奠定了基因編碼基礎(chǔ)。

chimpanzee: 黑猩猩

branch off: 從...分支出來

encode: 編碼

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