特别广播英语第 31 课：Do animals Think? 动物也会思考吗？-4

After a while he let him out in a room where there was a great variety of things. 过了一会儿又把它放出来，放进了一间里面有很多种不同的东西的房间里。

As soon as he was let out he began to exercise his building instinct. 刚把这只小河狸放出来，它就开始施展了它筑坝的本能。

He gathered together whatever he could find, brushes, baskets, boots, clothes, sticks, bits of coal, etc., and arranged them as if to build a dam. 它把凡是能找到的东西：刷子、筐子、靴子、衣服、棍子、煤块等等都集中到一起，然后来安排这些东西，好像要筑水坝似的。。

Now, if he had had his wits about him, he would have known that there was no use in building a dam where there was no water. 那么，如果它真的有头有脑的话，它就该知道，在这没有水的地方筑水坝是根本没用的

It is plain that, while animals learn about things by their senses as we do, they do not think nearly as much about what they learn, and this is the reason why they do not improve more rapidly. 道理很明显，当动物像我们人一样在凭各种感官学习事物时，动物对所学的事物几乎不多加考虑，这就是之所以动物不能较迅速地提高的原因。

Even the wisest of them, as the elephant and the dog, do not think very much about what they see and hear. 即使是像大象和小狗这样最聪明的动物，也不能对它们的所见所闻加以思考。

Nor is this all. There are some things that we understand, but about which animals know nothing. 事情还远不止如此。有些事情我们能懂，而这些事情，动物根本一窍不通。

They have no knowledge of anything that happens outside of their own observation. 动物对于发生在自己的视野之外一切事物一无所知。

Their minds are so much unlike ours that they do not know the difference between right and wrong. 动物的头脑与我们人类的头脑是很不相同的，所以动物的头脑就分辨不出真伪或对错。