题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
浙江省杭州市杭高钱江校区2020-2021学年高二上学期英语期中试卷
"All puppies are cute," explains Clive Wynne, the head of Arizona State University's canine-science laboratory. "But not all puppies are equally cute." Indeed, recent research indicates that peak puppy cuteness serves important purposes and might play an important role in binding dog and owner together.
In a study, Wynne and his colleagues sought to pin down, scientifically, the timeline of puppy cuteness. Their finding was: People consistently considered dogs most attractive when they were six to eight weeks old. This age, Wynne says, is an important developmental period: Mother dogs stop nursing their young around the eighth week, after which puppies rely on humans for survival. Peak cuteness, then, is no accident.
Humans seem to be especially vulnerable (脆弱的) to cute things. Research dating back to the 1940s shows that almost any creature with babylike features — large eyes, a bulging forehead, short limbs — is able to draw our liking. But puppy cuteness is uniquely human-directed. Other research makes clear just why dogs seek to command our attention. Oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, has been found to suddenly increase in dogs and their owners after they look in each other's eyes. In other words, the more dogs get us to look at them, the more tightly bonded (联系) to them we grow.
Born blind and basically deaf, puppies aren't interactive (互动的) in their first weeks of life, and Wynne notes that many people find animals in this stage alien and unattractive. A recent study focused on humans showed that, similar to six-week-old puppies, six-month-old babies are seen as significantly cuter than newborns, which inspires a flood of social interactions, such as petting, playing, and baby-talking. These acts are developmentally fundamental to both babies and puppies.
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