下面来自出国留学网英语频道整理的科学美国人60秒:如果可以，黑猩猩也会“做饭”，欢迎阅读。
Chimps Would "Cook" Food If They Could
如果可以，黑猩猩也会“做饭”
If you cozy up to a campfire this summer, ponder what Charles Darwin called, quote, "probably the greatest [discovery] ever made by man" - the control of fire. The anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham has argued that the control of fire - and thus, cooking - has actually shaped our bodies and our brains.
如果今年夏天你想在参加篝火会时取悦众人，那考虑一下查尔斯·达尔文的名言吧：“这可能是有史以来人类最伟大的发现” ——控制火。人类学家和灵长类动物学家理查德·兰厄姆则认为控制火以及烹饪的行为——实际上塑造了我们的身体和大脑。
But cooking isn't just about controlling fire.
但是烹饪不仅仅是控制火那么简单。
"When you think about cooking it actually has a lot of complex components." Yale psychologist Alexandra Rosati.
“当你想到烹饪时，实际上会想到它有很多复杂的成分。”耶鲁大学的心理学家亚历山大·罗萨蒂说。
"So you have to plan for the future, you have to have some self-control by refraining to eat raw food you already have right now, you might want to have some causal reasoning to understand how cooking transforms the food."
“你必须先计划一下，必须有一定的自控能力克制自己不去吃现有的生食物。或许你需要一些因果推理思维，了解烹饪是如何转换食物的。”
She and her colleague Felix Warneken, (VAR-neken) at Harvard, wanted to know if chimps also possess these basic cognitive qualities - even though they do not cook or control fire. So they performed a series of experiments in a chimp sanctuary in the Republic of Congo. They confirmed—as past studies have—that chimps prefer cooked over raw food. But they also found that chimps will patiently refrain from eating raw food right in front of them if they think there's a chance it might get cooked. The chimps will even load raw food into what they thought was a "cooking device"—in reality a container with a false bottom, by which researchers would replace the raw food with cooked.
她和来自哈佛的同事菲利克斯·沃纳肯(瓦尔——尼凯恩)想知道：黑猩猩是否也拥有这些基本的认知特质——虽然它们并不会去做饭或控制火。因此他们在刚果共和国的黑猩猩避难所进行了一系列的实验。最终他们确认，就像过去的研究证明的那样：比起生食，黑猩猩更喜欢煮熟的食物。但他们也发现，如果黑猩猩们认为摆在它们面前的生食物有机会被煮熟，它们会耐心地克制住自己不去吃那些生食物。黑猩猩甚至会把生食物放到它们认为的“烹饪设备”上——事实上是个拥有虚假底部的容器，研究人员通过“假底”偷偷地把生食物换成熟食。
And chimps will even transport food across a room to one of those cooking devices, rather than eat it raw. At least sometimes.
黑猩猩甚至会穿过一间屋子把食物运输到这个“烹饪设备”上，而不去吃生的。至少有时候是这样。
"They'd often try to carry it with their mouth, because chimpanzees are knuckle walkers, and you'd almost see them accidentally eat the food on their way over, almost like "oops" they couldn't even resist, because they were carrying the food in their mouth." The results are in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: B.
“因为黑猩猩是靠关节行走的，所以它们经常会用嘴叼着食物进行搬运。你甚至能看到它们在搬运的路上不小心吃掉一些食物，就像是不得已而为之，因为它们甚至没机会去抗拒——要知道它们是用嘴携带食物的。”该研究结果发表于《皇家学会学报B》。
The researchers say these findings suggest that the common ancestor of chimps and humans may have also had this predisposition to cooking—so when fire was discovered, cooking caught on fast.
研究人员称这些发现表明：黑猩猩和人类的共同祖先可能也有这种烹饪的倾向——因此火被发现后，做饭很快变得流行起来。
But for chimps who might have serious culinary aspirations, there’s a catch.
但对于黑猩猩这种物种来说，虽然它的内心非常想烹饪食物，但仍面临一个问题。
"Cooking is sort of this very strange behavior because people do it together. Knowing something about the social behavior of chimps suggests that might actually be a really serious problem for them. So in contrast to humans, who will gather food and bring it back to a central location and cook it together, and share the food, chimps sort of eat on the go and they don't really share food in that kind of way. So this sort of social explanation suggests that could be a really serious constraint on the evolution of cooking."
“烹饪是一种非常奇怪的行为——因为人类是通过通力合作完成的。已知的一些关于黑猩猩的社会行为表明：人类这种行为对黑猩猩来说，实际上可能是一个非常严重的问题。所以，与人类这种将食物收集起来并带回一个聚集地，然后再集中烹饪并分享食物的行为相比，黑猩猩更倾向于边走边吃，而且它们确实不会用这种方式来分享食物。因此这种社会行为解读表明：黑猩猩的这种行为对于烹饪的进化来说，可能是一个非常巨大的约束。”
Something else to chew on as you and your human friends gather round the grill this summer, sharing in the bounty.
今年夏天当你和你的人类朋友们聚集在一起烧烤时，需要好好想想慷慨共享成果的重要性了。