成都理工大学 2020 年考博《英语》真题（样本展示）

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Directions: Read the passage "Horses Recognize Pictures of Their Keepers" carefully, then write an abstract that summarizes the central idea of it. Try to limit your writing within 120 words. Write your abstract in the proper space on Answer Sheet.

We recognize our friends' faces. And we're not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by their facial features. That's important, because they need to be able to adjust their behavior depending on who they encounter. And research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated animals can even distinguish among different human faces by looking at photographs alone.

Scientists have also wondered whether domesticated animals that have co-existed with people for thousands of years can recognize different human faces. For example, we've shared more than 5,000 years of our history with horses. Plus, they can live up to 30 years, and may need to retain a great deal of information about us throughout their lifetimes.

Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.

She and her team first taught the horses how to "choose" between two side-by-side images by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their current keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored the stranger's face about 75% of the time, significantly better than chance.

What's more, the horses also preferentially picked photos of their previous keeper—a person they hadn't seen in six months. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as accurate in picking out their previous keeper as they were at identifying their current one. The findings are in the journal Scientific Reports.

The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they intuitively understand that photographs are two-dimensional representations of real life, without any other cues such as odor or sound. And they're even better at this than our oldest animal companion, the domestic dog.

In addition, horses seem to have a robust long-term memory for human faces, consistent with their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidant. So maybe think twice before doing anything at a stable that might give a horse a long face.

Abstract This passage introduces a study by ethologist Léa Lansade and her team on horses’ ability to recognize human faces in photos. The team trained horses to select images by touching a screen, then tested them with photos of current/unfamiliar keepers and previous keepers (not seen for 6 months). Horses correctly identified current keepers 75% of the time (better than chance) and were equally accurate at recognizing previous ones. Published in Scientific Reports, the study shows horses can distinguish familiar/unfamiliar human faces via photos (without extra cues like odor), outperform dogs, and have a strong long-term memory for human faces. Future research will explore horses’ reactions to photos of those who harmed them.