關於狗的英語美文閱讀
閱讀經典美文可以豐富學生的知識,鞏固學習成果;可以提高學生的閱讀能力和寫作能力;可以學生的審美能力和陶冶情操。小編整理了關於狗的英語美文,歡迎閱讀!
關於狗的英語美文篇一
狗狗能識別人的情緒
So you think you know your dog. But how well does your dog know you? She probably recognizes you when she sees you. But can a dog tell by simply looking at you whether you have a happy or an angry expression on your face? Researchers in Austria have taught pet dogs to know the difference.
Dogs are very mindful of sound. When dog owners shout or speak in a strong, harsh voice, dogs often act guilty and quietly move away from the area.
Recently, researchers found that dogs can look at our faces, and tell the difference between a smile and a frown. The animals were able to recognize a look of approval from one of disapproval.
Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna performed a series of experiments. They taught dogs to recognize facial expressions. They showed the dogs two pictures of either the upper or lower half of a person's face. On one picture, the person looked happy. The other appeared angry.
The dogs were then shown images of the eyes or mouths of people they had never seen before. They were also shown the left half of the faces used in training.
Corsin Muller led the study.
"We were essentially speaking, do they realize that smiling eyes have the same meaning as a smiling mouth, or angry eyes have the same meaning as an angry mouth? And it turned out that they really did perform very well in these probe trials. Once they had learned the initial discrimination, they could spontaneously, immediately choose the correct one also in the probe trials with the normal stimuli."
Once the dogs learned to recognize which image was happy or angry, they could easily identify the same expressions in pictures of any face.
Corsin Muller says future studies will try to show whether dogs can learn the meaning of facial expressions -- for example, whether a frown shows that someone is angry.
"What we can say with our study is that they can discriminate them, that they can tell these ones are different. But what we cannot be sure of at this point is what exact meaning they are associating with these different expressions."
"Seems of course likely that they would associate some positive meaning with the smiley face and they would associate some rather negative meaning with the angry face. But what exactly they are associating with these expressions we cannot know at this point."
In the experiments, researchers found the dogs were slower to link a reward, or prize, with recognition of the angry face. This suggested that dogs had an idea people with angry faces were best avoided.
Corsin Muller says canine investigators are also interested in finding out whether wild wolves can be trained to recognize human facial expressions.
The researchers' findings were published in the journal Current Biology. They provide the first solid evidence that humans are not the only species that can read the body language of another species.
關於狗的英語美文篇二
人類好夥伴 狗狗真能聽懂你的話
Dogs have been man’s best friend for thousands of years, a source of companionship andloyalty since the Stone Age.
幾千年以來,狗狗都是人類最好的朋友,從石器時代開始就是人類忠誠的陪伴。
Now scientists suspect they have discovered the root of the relationship - a dog really doesunderstand his master’s voice.
如今,科學家們猜測他們找到了友誼的根源——狗狗真的能聽懂他的主人在說什麼。
Researchers have found that pet dogs process language in a similar way to humans.
研究者發現,寵物狗的語言處理和人類有一定相似度。
They learn to recognise the words that are spoken - the groups of consonantsand vowelsthatmake up spoken commands.
他們會學著去辨認主人的話——這些由一系列子音和母音組成的口頭命令。
But tests suggest they also notice the more subtle aspects of human communication - theemotional tone, intonation and volume changes that influence the meaning of language.
不過試驗表示,他們也發現了人類交流上一些微妙的方面——情緒基調、聲調和音量會對語言的意思產生影響。
Scientists at Sussex University think this is because dogs process language in the same way aswe do.
蘇塞克斯大學的研究者們認為,狗狗的語言在某種意義上和我們是一樣的。
They tested the way different aspects of language seemed to go through different parts of thebrain.
他們試驗後發現腦中不同的領域似乎掌管不同方面的語言。
Humans have a ‘hemispheric bias’ when it comes to communication, with different aspects oflanguage favouring the left or right side of the brain.
人類在交流時會有“半腦偏見”,不同方面的語言會有左右腦不同分工處理。
The researchers’ tests suggest that dogs process speech in the same way.
研究者的試驗發現狗狗們也是如此。
A group of 25 dogs were placed between two speakers playing recorded commands - such as‘come on then’.
25只狗被放養在兩個發出命令的人身邊——比如發出“過來”這樣的命令。
When the command was delivered in a flat, emotionless tone, the dogs turned right,suggesting the animals were concentrating on the words, not the intonation.
當命令以一種平的,不帶感情的語調說出來時,狗狗馬上向右轉,這說明動物對詞語有反應,而不糾結於聲調上。
But when the commands exaggerated intonation or emotion, the animals turned left.
不過當放大了聲調和情緒時,狗狗向左轉了。
The results suggest that like us, dogs process different aspects of human speech in differentparts of the brain, perhaps indicating why they can be trained to follow people.
結果顯示,和我們一樣,狗狗腦中不同的區域掌管不同的語言,這也許是為何他們能被訓練成人類好幫手的原因。
Researcher Dr David Reby, from the University of Sussex, said: ‘This is particularly interestingbecause our results suggest that the processing of speech components in the dog’s brain isdivided between the two hemispheres in a way that is actually very similar to the way it isseparated in the human brain.’
蘇塞克斯大學的大衛·雷貝學者說道:“這很有意思,因為我們的研究成果表明了狗狗大腦也有半球分割槽來掌管語言,這和人類大腦有著一定相似度。”
Victoria Ratcliffe, who co-wrote the paper, added: ‘Although we cannot say how much or inwhat way dogs understand information in speech from our study, we can say that dogs reactto both verbal and speaker-related information and that these components appear to beprocessed in different areas of the dog’s brain.’
論文的第二作者維多利亞·拉克特里夫補充道:“雖然從研究中,我們不能說明多大程度上狗狗明白語言中的資訊,我們可以說狗狗對口頭的或者說說出口的資訊都會有反應,而且這些似乎是由狗狗大腦中不同的區域在掌管。”
In their paper, published in the journal Current Biology, the scientists wrote: ‘The strikingcorrespondence between dogs’ and humans’ hemispheric biases reported here may reflectconvergent evolution if dogs have been selected to respond to human vocal signals duringdomestication.’
在他們的這篇刊登於《當代生物學期刊》的論文中,學者們寫道:“狗狗和人類半腦偏好的驚人一致性也許反映了在馴化中,如果狗狗被選為對人類口頭訊號作出反應,他們就會擁有聚集性的進化。”
關於狗的英語美文篇三
Think You Know How Dogs Drink Water?
Why is it that when dogs drink, water seems to go everywhere?
When my dog drinks from her bowl, there is no question, water will end up on the floor. It looks like a sloppy, unorganized way to get a good drink of water.
Researchers at Virginia Tech University have been studying how dogs drink. They say dogs know exactly what they are doing. The animals are actually making precise movements at a high speed. This helps them get the fluid they need when they are thirsty.
It turns out that neither dogs, nor cats, have a full set of cheeks. This means they cannot create suction to drink, like humans or elephants and horses.
Dogs lap, or take up, the water with their tongues curled backward. As they lap, they move their tongues very quickly to build up momentum. That forces the water into a column and up into their mouths.
The Virginia Tech researchers filmed 19 dogs of different sizes and breeds as they drank water. They created different laboratory models to measure tongue motion, and the amounts of water taken in.
Using the data from these experiments, the researchers were able to make a model that shows how a dog drinks water.
The researchers said that since the mouths of dogs and cats are structured nearly the same way, they thought they would drink water the same way, too.
But here is a surprise. The studies showed each family of animals has its own special drinking method.
"We know cats and dogs are quite different in terms of behavior and character," said Sunghwan "Sunny" Jung, a study author and an associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech.
"But before we did fundamental studies of how these animals drink fluids, our guess was dogs and cats drink about the same way. Instead we found out that dogs drink quite differently than cats," he said.
What is the difference?
Dogs must quickly move their tongues down into the water using momentum to bring the water up and into their mouths. Cats don't bend their tongues to drink like dogs. Cats use less momentum and a more gentle action. They just skim, or barely touch, the surface of the water to drink it.
"Cats tend be viewed as neater, dogs are messier, but dogs really have to accelerate their tongues" to make good use of the way the fluid column works, said researcher Sean Gart, a Virginia Tech graduate student.
Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.