研究证实--八周大的幼犬已经可以理解人说话(上)

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是凯伦·霍普金。

Dogs and their people.

狗与他们的主人。

Who’s a good boy? Are you a good boy? Yes, you are!

谁是好孩子？你是个好孩子吗？是，你是个好孩子！

We like to think our pooches can follow what we’re telling them.

我们认为我们的狗狗能听懂我们说的话。

Go get your bally! Over there! Go get it! Good doggy!

去拿你的巴利吧！在那边! 去拿吧！好狗狗！

Well, to some degree they can—even when they’re young—because a new study shows that puppies are able to track human social cues at just eight weeks of age, before they’ve really spent much time with people.

嗯，在某种程度上，它们可以听懂我们说话—甚至在它们很小的时候——一项新的研究表明，幼犬在八周大的时候就能够追踪人类的社交线索，那个时候它们还未真正与人相处很长时间。

And their ability to do so has strong roots in their genetics.

它们的这种能力植根于它们的基因。

The work appears in the journal Current Biology.

这项研究发表在《当代生物学》期刊上。

We have known for a long time that adult dogs are especially skilled in understanding cooperative communication from humans.

我们早就知晓成年犬特别擅长理解人类的合作交流。

Emily Bray is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona and the Canine Companions for Independence.

艾米丽·布雷是亚利桑那大学和独立犬友会的博士后研究员。

So, for example, they can spontaneously follow a human pointing gesture.

例如，幼犬会不由自主地跟随人类的手势。

They’re even better at it than apes, which are much more closely related to us than canines are, evolutionarily speaking.

它们甚至比猩猩更擅长这一点，从进化的角度来说，猩猩与我们的联系比犬科动物更近。

So this begs the question of why.

这就引出了为什么的问题。

Is it a skill that dogs pick up simply by spending time with people?

这是一种只需要狗花时间与人呆在一起就能掌握的技能吗?

Or is it a trait that was selected for when dogs first became domesticated?

或是说这是狗最初被驯化时选出的特征吗?

To find out, Bray and her colleagues spent time with 375 puppies that were going to be trained to be service dogs by Canine Companions.

为了找到答案，布雷和她的同事们与375只小狗一起度过了一段时间，这些小狗将被“独立犬友会”训练成服务犬。

All were either Labradors, golden retrievers or a mix.

这些小狗要么是拉布拉多犬，要么是金毛寻回犬，要么是混血。

All were around eight weeks old. And I’m guessing all were pretty adorable.

它们都是八周大的幼犬。我猜它们都很可爱。

You’re such a cute puppy!

你真是一只可爱的小狗!

Bray figured that by working with pups that had spent the bulk of their young lives with their littermates and mom, she could tease out whether dogs have to learn to interpret human communications—or if it’s something they come by naturally.

布雷发现，通过对那些幼年时大部分时间都与同伴和母亲生活在一起的幼犬进行研究，她可以提炼出狗是必须学会理解人类的交流，还是这是它们天生的技能。

The pups participated in a handful of cognitive tests designed to assess dogs’ social smarts.

这些幼犬参加了一些旨在评估狗狗社交能力的认知测试。