VOA常速英语:Cats Watch Humans for Behavioral Clues

We also know the ancient and special bond between dogs and humans.Our canine friends can read our tone of voice and our expression and they look into our eyes for clues that help our two species get along so well.Well move over rover because it turns out your house cat, far from being the aloof master of the house can do the same thing.
我们也知道狗和人类之间古老而特殊的联系。我们的狗狗朋友能读懂我们的语调和表情，它们看着我们的眼睛寻找线索，这让我们这两个物种相处得很好。闲话且不多说，因为其实你家的猫，倒也并不总是高冷的小主，它们也可以像宠物狗一样。

In general we found that cats are very good in following human gazing signals. In experiments researchers put 2 exactly alike bowls of food on the floor but only look at one and guess which one the cat went to?Whether it be in the way sustained gaze when we don’t take off our eyes from the target or we do a momentary gaze when we just look shortly on the target and then turn back to the cat and independently of the difficulty or the level of difficulty of this gazing signals, cats are very good in following it.
总的来说，我们发现猫非常善于跟踪人类的视线信号。在实验中，研究人员把两碗一模一样的食物放在地板上，但只看一碗，猜猜猫去了哪一碗? 无论是在持续的目光，当我们不把我们的眼睛从目标移走，或我们做一个短暂的目光看在目标上，然后转向猫咪，无论是本身的难度还是视线信号的难度，猫都能很容易的跟上。

The question these researchers are asking now: is it just cats and dogs who’ve learned to do this because they have lived with us for so long. Or is this something that animals just do? Cats learn spontaneously that by human’s looking at can be important.And this is a very interesting thing because then you could ask that,okay if it is not in need but the cat learn it, could any other animals learn it?
这些研究人员现在要问的问题是:是不是只有猫和狗才学会这样做，因为它们和我们一起生活了这么久。或者这是动物都具有的行为?猫会自发地学习，通过人类的注视起了重要的作用。这是一件非常有趣的事情，因为你可以问，如果猫不必要学习，但是它还是学会了，其那么其他动物也能学会吗?

This is the only test on this done so far but the results were clear.We established whether the given cat performed better than picking randomly.Our results showed that their success rate was 70% overall.Researchers say one of the reasons it has taken so long to learn about this behaviour because cats are notoriously hard to study.Evidently they just could not be bothered.
这是迄今为止唯一的测试，但结果很清楚。我们确定了给定的猫的学习行为是否比随机选择行为表现得更好。我们的结果显示，他们的成功率是70%。研究人员称，人们花了这么长时间才了解猫的这种行为，其中一个众所周知的原因是，猫很难研究。说到底，猫们就是懒得理你。

Kevin Enochs, VOA News.
凯文·埃诺克斯，美国之音新闻。