2023考研英語閱讀狗人類最好的朋友

　　Mans best friend

　　狗，人類最好的朋友

　　Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behaviour Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet.

　　《狗的心靈世界：狗類行為科學新發展讓你更加走進愛犬的內心世界》

　　By John Bradshaw. Basic Books; 324 pages; $25.99. Published in Britain as In Defence ofDogs: Why Dogs Need Our Understanding. Allen Lane; ?20. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

　　作者：約翰?布拉德肖;Basic Books出版社出版;324頁;售價25.99美元;英國出版名為《為狗辯護：為何狗需要我們的理解?》;Allen lane出版社出版;售價20英鎊。本書也可在Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk購得。

　　THE relationship between people and dogs is unique. Among domesticated animals, only dogsare capable of performing such a wide variety of roles for humans: herding sheep, sniffing outdrugs or explosives and being our beloved companions. It is hard to be precise about whenthe friendship began, but a reasonable guess is that it has been going strong for more than20,000 years. In the Chauvet cave in the Ardche region of France, which contains the earliestknown cave paintings, there is a 50-metre trail of footprints made by a boy of about tenalongside those of a large canid that appears to be part-wolf, part-dog. The footprints, whichhave been dated by soot deposited from the torch the child was carrying, are estimated to beabout 26,000 years old.

　　人狗關系可謂獨一無二。在各種家畜中，只有狗可為人類擔負如此多重任：看護羊群，搜尋毒品、炸藥，做我們的摯愛伙伴。人類與狗之間的友情很難精確追根溯源，一種比較合理的說法是2萬多年前開始，這種友情就開始逐漸深厚了。法國阿爾代什省的蕭維巖洞中保存著迄今為止最早的巖洞壁畫，巖洞中有一串50米長的約十歲男孩的腳印，旁邊還有一串半狼半狗的大型犬類的腳印。從男孩所持火把掉落的灰塵來看，這些腳印是在約2萬6千年前留下的。

　　The first proto-dogs probably remained fairly isolated from each other for several thousandyears. As they became progressively more domesticated they moved with people on large-scalemigrations, mixing their genes with other similarly domesticated creatures and becomingincreasingly dog-like in the process. For John Bradshaw, a biologist whofounded the anthrozoology department at the University of Bristol, having some idea abouthow dogs got to be dogs is the first stage towards gaining a better understanding of whatdogs and people mean to each other. Part of his agenda is to explode the many myths aboutthe closeness of dogs to wolves and the mistakes that this has led to, especially in the trainingof dogs over the past century or so.

　　狗最早的祖先們相互之間并無太多交集，這種情況很可能持續了數千年。隨著馴化程度越來越高，它們隨人類進行大遷移，并同其他馴化的動物進行交配，狗的特征逐漸明顯。約翰?布拉德是布里斯托爾大學人與動物關系學院的創始人，對這位生物學家來說，了解狗如何演變為狗是更好地研究人類與狗關系的第一步。書中，他想要打破關于狗狼近親的種種謬論以及由此而導致的錯誤做法，尤其是過去約一世紀中人類對狗的馴化問題。

　　One idea has governed dog training for far too long,Mr Bradshaw says. Wolf packs are supposedlydespotic hierarchies dominated by alpha wolves.Dogs are believed to behave in the same way in theirdealings with humans. Thus training a dogeffectively becomes a contest for dominance inwhich there can be only one winner. To achieve thisthe trainer must use a variety of punishmenttechniques to gain the dogs submission to hismastery. Just letting a dog pass through a doorbefore you or stand on the stairs above you is torisk encouraging it to believe that it is getting the upper hand over you and the rest of thehousehold. Mr Bradshaw argues that the theory behind this approach is based on bad andoutdated science.

　　布拉德肖說，長期以來一種觀點指導著狗的馴化。一般認為，狼群內部等級森嚴，頭狼具有絕對領導權，狗在與人類相處時，這一點也與狼相同。于是訓狗實際就成了一場領導權的競爭，最后只有一個勝者，要么人勝，要么狗勝。為贏得這場競爭，人類必須用各種懲罰手段使狗對自己服服帖帖。例如，若允許狗在你之前進門或上臺階就會讓狗覺得自己可凌駕于你和家人之上。布拉德肖認為這種訓狗方式背后的指導思想是過時的謬誤理論。

　　Dogs share 99.6% of the same DNA as wolves. That makes dogs closer to wolves than we areto chimps , but it does not mean thattheir brains work like those of wolves. Indeed, the outgoing affability of most dogs towardshumans and other dogs is in sharp contrast to the mix of fear and aggression with whichwolves react to animals from other packs. Domestication has been a long and complexprocess, Mr Bradshaw writes. Every dog alive today is a product of this transition. What wasonce another one of the wild social canids, the grey wolf, has been altered radically, to thepoint that it has become its own unique animal. If anything, dogs resemble juvenile ratherthan fully adult canids, a sort of arrested development which accounts for the way they remaindependent on their human owners throughout their lives.

　　狗和狼的DNA相似度高達99.6%，這樣狗與狼的相似度甚至比人與大猩猩還要高。但這并不意味著狗和狼大腦運作方式相同。實際上，狗對人類和其同類都友好和善，與狼對本群之外的其他動物懷有的恐懼和攻擊心理形成鮮明對比。布拉德肖說在書中寫道：馴化是一個漫長復雜的過程，如今每一只狗都是這個過程的產物。比如灰狼曾經是一種野外群居犬科動物，現在已經在這個過程中徹底改變，形成了一種新的獨特物種。如果說狗與犬科動物確有相似性，那么也只是像未成年而非成年犬科動物。這種類似發育停滯的現象可以解釋狗為何一生都如此依賴主人。

　　But what makes the dog-wolf paradigm especially misleading, Mr Bradshaw argues, is thatuntil recently, the studies of wolves were of the wrong wolves in extremely artificialconditions. In the wild, wolf packs tend to be made up of close family members representing upto three generations. The father and mother of the first lot of cubs are the natural leaders ofthe pack, but the behavioural norm is one of co-operation rather than domination andsubmission. However, the wolves on which biologists founded their conclusions aboutdominance hierarchies were animals living in unnaturally constituted groups in captivity. MrBradshaw says that feral or village dogs, which are much closer to the ancestors of pet dogsthan they are to wolves, are highly tolerant of one another and organise themselves entirelydifferently from either wild or captive wolves.

　　布拉德肖認為，近來某些研究中的狼都是生活在人工色彩極重的環境中的豢養狼，是不可以作為研究對象的，這讓狗狼相似理論變得尤其具有誤導性。野生狼群常常以數個家庭為單位，祖孫三代共同生活。第一窩狼崽的父母順理成章地成為狼群領袖，但狼群之內行為模式是以合作為主的，而非統治與服從。然而生物學家關于狼群等級統治的結論是建立在非自然聚合的豢養狼群之上。布拉德肖說： 同狼相比，野狗或者說土狗與如今寵物狗的祖先關系要近得多，野狗個體之間非常寬容，狗群的組織方式與野生和豢養的狼也完全不同。

　　Dogs are not like nicely brought-up wolves, says theauthor, nor are they much like people despite theirextraordinary ability to enter our lives and ourhearts. This is not to deny that some dogs are veryclever or that they are capable of feeling emotiondeeply. But their intelligence is different from ours.The idea that some dogs can understand as manywords as a two-year-old child is simply wrong and aninappropriate way of trying to measure canineintellect. Rather, their emotional range is morelimited than ours, partly because, with little sense oftime, they are trapped almost entirely in the present. Dogs can experience joy, anxiety andanger. But emotions that demand a capacity for self-reflection, such as guilt or jealousy, arealmost certainly beyond them, contrary to the convictions of many dog owners.

　　根據布拉德肖的看法，狗并不是精心調教大的狼，也不怎么像人類盡管他們能如此走進我們的生活，走進我們的內心。當然不否認有些狗非常聰明，善于體會人類的感情。但狗的智力和我們是不同的。有人說一些狗能理解的詞匯數量可以同一個兩歲小孩一樣多，這種看法根本就是不對的，狗的智力也不能用這種方式衡量。實際上，狗的情感范圍相比人類是很有限的，這部分是因為狗沒有時間的概念，因此幾乎就生活在當前。狗確實能夠體會高興、焦慮和憤怒，但和很多狗主人所想的完全相反，有些情感如內疚或嫉妒等需要自省能力，這些情感是幾乎完全在狗的體驗能力之外的。

　　Mr Bradshaw believes that it is difficult for people to empathize with the way in which dogsexperience and respond to the world through their extraordinary sense of smell: theirsensitivity to odours is between 10,000 and 100,000 times greater than ours. A newly paintedroom might be torture for a dog; on the other hand, their olfactory ability and their trainabilityallow dogs to perform almost unimaginable feats, such as smelling the early stages of a cancerlong before a normal medical diagnosis would detect it.

　　布拉德肖覺得，關于狗有一點人們很難理解，即狗靠其靈敏的嗅覺來體驗周圍世界并作出反應：狗的嗅覺靈敏度是人類的1萬到10萬倍。讓狗呆在新粉刷的房屋里可能對它就是巨大的折磨;另一方面，狗的嗅覺敏銳度和高度可訓練性讓它們能夠做到幾乎無法想象的事情，例如早在醫學診斷結果出來之前，狗就可以嗅出早期癌癥。

　　The latest scientific research can help dogs and their owners have happier, healthierrelationships by encouraging people to understand dogs better. But Mr Bradshaw is alsofearful. In particular, he deplores the incestuous narrowing of the gene pool that modernpedigree breeders have brought about. Dogs today are rarely bred for their working abilities, but for a very particular type of appearance, which inevitablyrisks the spread of physical and temperamental abnormalities. Instead, he suggests thatdogs be bred for the ideal behavioural traits associated with the role they will actually play. Healso worries that the increasing urbanisation of society and the pressures on couples to worklong hours are putting dogs under huge strain. He estimates that about 20% of Britains 8mdogs and Americas 70m suffer from separation distress when their owners leave the house,but argues that sensible training can teach them how to cope.

　　最新的科學研究鼓勵人們去更加了解狗，從而使狗與主人之間的關系更加健康愉快。但布拉德肖也有擔憂，他尤其反對現今為保證狗種純正而讓狗近親繁殖，導致狗的基因庫縮小。如今狗種培育很少是注重其為人們做事的能力，而是為了讓其具有特定外形，這不可避免地可能導致一些生理和性情上的畸形現象隨繁殖而擴散。布拉德肖認為，狗種培育時應注重保留與其扮演角色相關的優點。他還擔心隨著城市化發展，人們工作時間增長，狗也會面臨巨大壓力。據他估計，英國800萬和美國7000萬只狗中，約有20%在主人離開時表現出分別憂郁癥癥狀，不過他認為合理訓練會讓狗們知道如何應付分別。

　　Dog Sense is neither a manual nor a sentimental account of the joys of dog-ownership. Attimes its rigorously research-led approach can be slightly heavy going. A few more jollyanecdotes might have leavened the mix. But this is a wonderfully informative, quietlypassionate book that will benefit every dog whose owner reads it.

　　《狗的心靈世界》既非養狗手冊亦非養狗之樂的溫情系列。書中有的地方引用大量研究結果，讀起來可能還有些費勁，如果書中再增加些趣事的話可能會讓內容輕松一點。但不管怎樣，本書是一本內容充實、充滿熱情又不失寧靜的好書，讀讀這本書會讓你的愛犬幸福無比的。

　　Mans best friend

　　狗，人類最好的朋友

　　Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behaviour Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet.

　　《狗的心靈世界：狗類行為科學新發展讓你更加走進愛犬的內心世界》

　　By John Bradshaw. Basic Books; 324 pages; $25.99. Published in Britain as In Defence ofDogs: Why Dogs Need Our Understanding. Allen Lane; ?20. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

　　作者：約翰?布拉德肖;Basic Books出版社出版;324頁;售價25.99美元;英國出版名為《為狗辯護：為何狗需要我們的理解?》;Allen lane出版社出版;售價20英鎊。本書也可在Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk購得。

　　THE relationship between people and dogs is unique. Among domesticated animals, only dogsare capable of performing such a wide variety of roles for humans: herding sheep, sniffing outdrugs or explosives and being our beloved companions. It is hard to be precise about whenthe friendship began, but a reasonable guess is that it has been going strong for more than20,000 years. In the Chauvet cave in the Ardche region of France, which contains the earliestknown cave paintings, there is a 50-metre trail of footprints made by a boy of about tenalongside those of a large canid that appears to be part-wolf, part-dog. The footprints, whichhave been dated by soot deposited from the torch the child was carrying, are estimated to beabout 26,000 years old.

　　人狗關系可謂獨一無二。在各種家畜中，只有狗可為人類擔負如此多重任：看護羊群，搜尋毒品、炸藥，做我們的摯愛伙伴。人類與狗之間的友情很難精確追根溯源，一種比較合理的說法是2萬多年前開始，這種友情就開始逐漸深厚了。法國阿爾代什省的蕭維巖洞中保存著迄今為止最早的巖洞壁畫，巖洞中有一串50米長的約十歲男孩的腳印，旁邊還有一串半狼半狗的大型犬類的腳印。從男孩所持火把掉落的灰塵來看，這些腳印是在約2萬6千年前留下的。

　　The first proto-dogs probably remained fairly isolated from each other for several thousandyears. As they became progressively more domesticated they moved with people on large-scalemigrations, mixing their genes with other similarly domesticated creatures and becomingincreasingly dog-like in the process. For John Bradshaw, a biologist whofounded the anthrozoology department at the University of Bristol, having some idea abouthow dogs got to be dogs is the first stage towards gaining a better understanding of whatdogs and people mean to each other. Part of his agenda is to explode the many myths aboutthe closeness of dogs to wolves and the mistakes that this has led to, especially in the trainingof dogs over the past century or so.

　　狗最早的祖先們相互之間并無太多交集，這種情況很可能持續了數千年。隨著馴化程度越來越高，它們隨人類進行大遷移，并同其他馴化的動物進行交配，狗的特征逐漸明顯。約翰?布拉德是布里斯托爾大學人與動物關系學院的創始人，對這位生物學家來說，了解狗如何演變為狗是更好地研究人類與狗關系的第一步。書中，他想要打破關于狗狼近親的種種謬論以及由此而導致的錯誤做法，尤其是過去約一世紀中人類對狗的馴化問題。

　　One idea has governed dog training for far too long,Mr Bradshaw says. Wolf packs are supposedlydespotic hierarchies dominated by alpha wolves.Dogs are believed to behave in the same way in theirdealings with humans. Thus training a dogeffectively becomes a contest for dominance inwhich there can be only one winner. To achieve thisthe trainer must use a variety of punishmenttechniques to gain the dogs submission to hismastery. Just letting a dog pass through a doorbefore you or stand on the stairs above you is torisk encouraging it to believe that it is getting the upper hand over you and the rest of thehousehold. Mr Bradshaw argues that the theory behind this approach is based on bad andoutdated science.

　　布拉德肖說，長期以來一種觀點指導著狗的馴化。一般認為，狼群內部等級森嚴，頭狼具有絕對領導權，狗在與人類相處時，這一點也與狼相同。于是訓狗實際就成了一場領導權的競爭，最后只有一個勝者，要么人勝，要么狗勝。為贏得這場競爭，人類必須用各種懲罰手段使狗對自己服服帖帖。例如，若允許狗在你之前進門或上臺階就會讓狗覺得自己可凌駕于你和家人之上。布拉德肖認為這種訓狗方式背后的指導思想是過時的謬誤理論。

　　Dogs share 99.6% of the same DNA as wolves. That makes dogs closer to wolves than we areto chimps , but it does not mean thattheir brains work like those of wolves. Indeed, the outgoing affability of most dogs towardshumans and other dogs is in sharp contrast to the mix of fear and aggression with whichwolves react to animals from other packs. Domestication has been a long and complexprocess, Mr Bradshaw writes. Every dog alive today is a product of this transition. What wasonce another one of the wild social canids, the grey wolf, has been altered radically, to thepoint that it has become its own unique animal. If anything, dogs resemble juvenile ratherthan fully adult canids, a sort of arrested development which accounts for the way they remaindependent on their human owners throughout their lives.

　　狗和狼的DNA相似度高達99.6%，這樣狗與狼的相似度甚至比人與大猩猩還要高。但這并不意味著狗和狼大腦運作方式相同。實際上，狗對人類和其同類都友好和善，與狼對本群之外的其他動物懷有的恐懼和攻擊心理形成鮮明對比。布拉德肖說在書中寫道：馴化是一個漫長復雜的過程，如今每一只狗都是這個過程的產物。比如灰狼曾經是一種野外群居犬科動物，現在已經在這個過程中徹底改變，形成了一種新的獨特物種。如果說狗與犬科動物確有相似性，那么也只是像未成年而非成年犬科動物。這種類似發育停滯的現象可以解釋狗為何一生都如此依賴主人。

　　But what makes the dog-wolf paradigm especially misleading, Mr Bradshaw argues, is thatuntil recently, the studies of wolves were of the wrong wolves in extremely artificialconditions. In the wild, wolf packs tend to be made up of close family members representing upto three generations. The father and mother of the first lot of cubs are the natural leaders ofthe pack, but the behavioural norm is one of co-operation rather than domination andsubmission. However, the wolves on which biologists founded their conclusions aboutdominance hierarchies were animals living in unnaturally constituted groups in captivity. MrBradshaw says that feral or village dogs, which are much closer to the ancestors of pet dogsthan they are to wolves, are highly tolerant of one another and organise themselves entirelydifferently from either wild or captive wolves.

　　布拉德肖認為，近來某些研究中的狼都是生活在人工色彩極重的環境中的豢養狼，是不可以作為研究對象的，這讓狗狼相似理論變得尤其具有誤導性。野生狼群常常以數個家庭為單位，祖孫三代共同生活。第一窩狼崽的父母順理成章地成為狼群領袖，但狼群之內行為模式是以合作為主的，而非統治與服從。然而生物學家關于狼群等級統治的結論是建立在非自然聚合的豢養狼群之上。布拉德肖說： 同狼相比，野狗或者說土狗與如今寵物狗的祖先關系要近得多，野狗個體之間非常寬容，狗群的組織方式與野生和豢養的狼也完全不同。

　　Dogs are not like nicely brought-up wolves, says theauthor, nor are they much like people despite theirextraordinary ability to enter our lives and ourhearts. This is not to deny that some dogs are veryclever or that they are capable of feeling emotiondeeply. But their intelligence is different from ours.The idea that some dogs can understand as manywords as a two-year-old child is simply wrong and aninappropriate way of trying to measure canineintellect. Rather, their emotional range is morelimited than ours, partly because, with little sense oftime, they are trapped almost entirely in the present. Dogs can experience joy, anxiety andanger. But emotions that demand a capacity for self-reflection, such as guilt or jealousy, arealmost certainly beyond them, contrary to the convictions of many dog owners.

　　根據布拉德肖的看法，狗并不是精心調教大的狼，也不怎么像人類盡管他們能如此走進我們的生活，走進我們的內心。當然不否認有些狗非常聰明，善于體會人類的感情。但狗的智力和我們是不同的。有人說一些狗能理解的詞匯數量可以同一個兩歲小孩一樣多，這種看法根本就是不對的，狗的智力也不能用這種方式衡量。實際上，狗的情感范圍相比人類是很有限的，這部分是因為狗沒有時間的概念，因此幾乎就生活在當前。狗確實能夠體會高興、焦慮和憤怒，但和很多狗主人所想的完全相反，有些情感如內疚或嫉妒等需要自省能力，這些情感是幾乎完全在狗的體驗能力之外的。

　　Mr Bradshaw believes that it is difficult for people to empathize with the way in which dogsexperience and respond to the world through their extraordinary sense of smell: theirsensitivity to odours is between 10,000 and 100,000 times greater than ours. A newly paintedroom might be torture for a dog; on the other hand, their olfactory ability and their trainabilityallow dogs to perform almost unimaginable feats, such as smelling the early stages of a cancerlong before a normal medical diagnosis would detect it.

　　布拉德肖覺得，關于狗有一點人們很難理解，即狗靠其靈敏的嗅覺來體驗周圍世界并作出反應：狗的嗅覺靈敏度是人類的1萬到10萬倍。讓狗呆在新粉刷的房屋里可能對它就是巨大的折磨;另一方面，狗的嗅覺敏銳度和高度可訓練性讓它們能夠做到幾乎無法想象的事情，例如早在醫學診斷結果出來之前，狗就可以嗅出早期癌癥。

　　The latest scientific research can help dogs and their owners have happier, healthierrelationships by encouraging people to understand dogs better. But Mr Bradshaw is alsofearful. In particular, he deplores the incestuous narrowing of the gene pool that modernpedigree breeders have brought about. Dogs today are rarely bred for their working abilities, but for a very particular type of appearance, which inevitablyrisks the spread of physical and temperamental abnormalities. Instead, he suggests thatdogs be bred for the ideal behavioural traits associated with the role they will actually play. Healso worries that the increasing urbanisation of society and the pressures on couples to worklong hours are putting dogs under huge strain. He estimates that about 20% of Britains 8mdogs and Americas 70m suffer from separation distress when their owners leave the house,but argues that sensible training can teach them how to cope.

　　最新的科學研究鼓勵人們去更加了解狗，從而使狗與主人之間的關系更加健康愉快。但布拉德肖也有擔憂，他尤其反對現今為保證狗種純正而讓狗近親繁殖，導致狗的基因庫縮小。如今狗種培育很少是注重其為人們做事的能力，而是為了讓其具有特定外形，這不可避免地可能導致一些生理和性情上的畸形現象隨繁殖而擴散。布拉德肖認為，狗種培育時應注重保留與其扮演角色相關的優點。他還擔心隨著城市化發展，人們工作時間增長，狗也會面臨巨大壓力。據他估計，英國800萬和美國7000萬只狗中，約有20%在主人離開時表現出分別憂郁癥癥狀，不過他認為合理訓練會讓狗們知道如何應付分別。

　　Dog Sense is neither a manual nor a sentimental account of the joys of dog-ownership. Attimes its rigorously research-led approach can be slightly heavy going. A few more jollyanecdotes might have leavened the mix. But this is a wonderfully informative, quietlypassionate book that will benefit every dog whose owner reads it.

　　《狗的心靈世界》既非養狗手冊亦非養狗之樂的溫情系列。書中有的地方引用大量研究結果，讀起來可能還有些費勁，如果書中再增加些趣事的話可能會讓內容輕松一點。但不管怎樣，本書是一本內容充實、充滿熱情又不失寧靜的好書，讀讀這本書會讓你的愛犬幸福無比的。