2015职称英语(理工类)教材阅读理解文章及译文(3)_职称英语阅读理解

2015职称英语(理工类)教材阅读理解文章及译文(3)

　　Young Female Chimps Outlearn Their Brothers

　　While young male chimps pass their time playing. Young female chimps carefully study their mothers. As a result, they learn how to fish for tasty termite snacks over two years before the boys.

　　The sex differences in learning behavior were consistent and strikingly apparent, says the team. The researchers point out that similar differences are seen in human children with regard to skills such as writing. A sex-based learning differences may therefore date back at least to the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. they write in the journal Nature.

　　Analysis of the six infants whose ages were known showed that girl chimps were an average of 31 months old when they succeeded in fishing out their termites, where the boy chimps were aged 58 months on average. Females were also more skillful at getting out more termites with every dip and used techniques similar to their mothers while males did not.

　　Lonsdorf adds that there just two main sources of animal protein for chimps the termites or colobus monkeys. Mature males often hunt monkeys up trees, but females are almost always either pregnant or burdened with a clinging infant. This makes hunting difficult, she says .Adult females spend more time fishing for termites than males. So becoming proficient at termite fishing could mean adult females eat better, They can watch their offspring at the same time. The young of both sexes seen to pursue activities related to their adult sex roles{10} at a very young age.