Everybody is happy as his pay rises．Yet pleasure at your own can disappear if you learn that a fellow worker has been given a bigger one．Indeed, if he is known as being lazy, you might even be quite cross．Such behavior is regarded as "all too human", with the underlying belief that other animals would not be able to have this finely developed sense of sadness．But a study by Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well．

    The researchers studied the behaviors of some kind of female brown monkeys．They look smart． They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food happily．Above all, like female human beings, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of "goods and services" than males．

    Such characteristics make them perfect subjects for Doctor Brosnan's study．The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens （奖券） for food．Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for pieces of cucumber．However, when two monkeys were placed in separate and connected rooms, so that each other could observe what the other is getting in return for its rock, they became quite different．

    In the world of monkeys, grapes are excellent goods （and much preferable to cucumbers）．So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was not willing to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber．And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either shook her own token at the researcher, or refused to accept the cucumber．Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other room （without an actual monkey to eat it） was enough to bring about dissatisfaction in a female monkey．

    The researches suggest that these monkeys, like humans, are guided by social senses．In the wild, they are co-operative and group-living．Such co-operation is likely to be firm only when each animal feels it is not being cheated．Feelings of anger when unfairly treated, it seems, are not the nature of human beings alone．Refusing a smaller reward completely makes these feelings clear to other animals of the group．However, whether such a sense of fairness developed independently in monkeys and humans, or whether it comes from the common roots that they had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question．

What brings a nation together? Of the four choices — shared values, language, history, and religion, it's shared values. In our latest poll (民意调査), seven out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor (因素）bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely linked Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, particularly in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor uniting their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.

    Most people agree that honesty is a good thing. But does Mother Nature agree? Animals can't talk, but can they lie in other ways? Can they lie with their bodies and behavior? Animal experts may not call it lying, but they do agree that many animals, from birds to chimpanzees, behave dishonestly to fool other animals. Why? Dishonesty often helps them survive.

    Many kinds of birds are very successful at fooling other animals. For example, a bird called the plover sometimes pretends to be hurt in order to protect its young. When a predator（猎食动物）gets close to its nest, the plover leads the predator away from the nest. How? It pretends to have a broken wing. The predator follows the “hurt” adult, leaving the baby birds safe in the nest.

  Another kind of bird, the scrub jay, buries its food so it always has something to eat. Scrub jays are also thieves. They watch where others bury their food and steal it. But clever scrub jays seem to know when a thief is watching them. So they go back later, unbury the food, and bury it again somewhere else.

    Birds called cuckoos have found a way to have babies without doing much work. How? They don't make nests. Instead, they get into other birds' nests secretly. Then they lay their eggs and fly away. When the baby birds come out, their adoptive parents feed them.

    Chimpanzees, or chimps, can also be sneaky. After a fight, the losing chimp will give its hand to the other. When the winning chimp puts out its hand, too, the chimps are friendly again. But an animal expert once saw a losing chimp take the winner's hand and start fighting again.

    Chimps are sneaky in other ways, too. When chimps find food that they love, such as bananas, it is natural for them to cry out. Then other chimps come running. But some clever chimps learn to cry very softly when they find food. That way, other chimps don't hear them, and they don't need to share their food.

    As children, many of us learn the saying “You can't fool Mother Nature.” But maybe you can't trust her, either.

    About three decades ago, China was known as the "Bicycle Kingdom". But later on, bikes were replaced by their fuel-powered competitors.

    But recent months have seen a recovery of the humble bike across China, with an increasing number of people choosing cycling instead of driving to schools, to workplaces or to do sightseeing. The introduction of bike-sharing schemes, pioneered by start-ups like Ofo and Mobike, has brought the trend to a new level.

    People can unlock the shared bikes by simply using their smartphone. The bikes are equipped with GPS and can be left anywhere in public for the next user. They're popular among many Chinese people as they provide an effective solution to the "last mile" problem, which refers to the final leg of a person's journey.

    " In places where the subway doesn't extend, where it's difficult to change from one kind of transport to another, it's so easy to get where you want to go with Mobike," Hu Hong,29,told AFP. She pedals(骑车)to her Shanghai real-estate job.

    However, the schemes have also led to problems such as illegal parking, vandalism(故意毁坏) and theft. Last month, two nurses in Beijing were placed under administrative punishment for five days for putting locks on two shared bikes. And in December, a man who stole a shared bike was sentenced to a 3-month detention(拘留),and fined 1 ,000 yuan by the Shanghai Minhang People's Court.

    " Bike-sharing is a greener method of transportation and provides a user-friendly experience,"said Liu Xiaoming, vice-minister of transport.

    " But it's a combination of online and offline business. Operators are usually strong in online services, but lack offline business experience, which causes problems."

    Now, Chinese service operators are trying to solve the problems. For example, a bike- sharing company called Mobike sets a 100-point credit score for each user, with points taken in the case of bad behavior. Once a score drops below 80, bike rental is increased to 100 yuan per 30 minutes, up from 0.5 - 1 yuan.

    A good disguise keeps you hidden, right? Well, sometimes the best disguise is actually the most dazzling because research reveals that flashy metallic iridescence(金属彩虹色) can visually puzzle predators, which allows colorful prey to survive another day. Those surprising results appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

    Shining iridescent color, which changes depending on the angle from which it's viewed, is favored by everything from birds to beetles and blossoms to butterflies.

    "And in our research group we are of course interested in why this vivid metallic color is so widespread in nature." Karin Kjernsmo of the University of Bristol adds that in some cases the showy splashes of light are a sexual strategy. " Here I would like to point out that in some species, particularly those that display strong sexual dimorphism(雌雄两性), such as birds of paradise or some butterflies or fishes, the occurrence of iridescence is most likely driven by sexual selection. For example, in many of these cases it is the males that have these vivid iridescent colors and they use them in mate choice or they use them as a signal to attract mates."  But iridescence also shows up in situations where reproduction is not an issue. " So what we are studying now is whether natural selection imposed by predation(捕食行为) could explain the occurrence of iridescence in prey animals."

    The idea that eye­catching colors could be used as a cover­up isn't a new one." The father of camouflage theory, Abbott Thayer, really believed that iridescence should be categorized as a camouflage strategy. And he wrote in his famous lifework Concealing­Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, already in 1909, that 'brilliantly changeable or metallic colors are among the strongest factors in an animal's concealment'. And this sounds like a completely unreasonable thing to say, because how can colors that are both brilliant and changeable contribute to animal's concealment？"

    "In a similar way, we were asking whether iridescence, due to its changeability, could work as a form of camouflage by preventing shape recognition." Kjernsmo and her colleagues trained bumblebees to associate a particular shape—a circle or an oval—with a sugar reward. And they found that the bees, when given a choice, would preferentially visit the shape they knew to be sweet. But when the shapes were iridescent, the bees had trouble telling them apart. "It seemed that the strikingly iridescent surfaces on our targets visually broke up the otherwise recognizable shape of the targets, which made them hard to distinguish." As for making use of this method for hiding in plain sight, "Any practical applications is of course directly linked to any industry that has an interest in camouflage, that is how to conceal objects or make them more difficult to recognize." The researchers are currently conducting experiments with birds, which often prey on iridescent insects to see if it helps to have a bird's­eye view.

    For many of us, our workplace can be dark, depressing and dull. Windowless rooms and airless open-plan floors can kill motivation and cause a loss to worker performance, possibly even their health.

    But a refreshing trend is taking root in workplace design: nature. There's a growing evidence showing that workplaces which include natural elements, such as plants, light, colors and shapes, have noticeable and measurable benefits for both companies and their employees.

    The positive effects touch on everything from worker happiness and creativity to increased productivity, improved profits, and the improved ability to attract the best workers. It's all based on the principle of biophilia(亲生命性) — the born relationship between humans and the natural world and other living systems. And it's easier to achieve at the office than you think.

    “People just don't like using lights in a building with no plants, no views, no natural light,” says Sir Cary Cooper CBE, professor at Lancaster University in the UK. He led a 2015 study on the impact of biophilia in the workplace that surveyed 7,600 workers in 16 countries and found that even small nature-inspired changes can have a great effect.

    Responding to the Human Spaces Global Report, those who worked in environments with natural elements reported a 15% higher level of well-being, a 6% higher level of productivity and a 15% higher level of creativity. One third of them said the design of an office would affect their decisions to work for a company. Even so, 58% said there were no live plants at their workplaces and 47% reported having no natural light.

    An earlier, 2014 study by Cardiff University in Wales also showed that plants in the office make people happier and more productive. But more research is needed into biophilia, experts say.